


The Country Wakes to Another War

by mnabokov



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, M/M, Post-Cuba, Post-Movie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-11 14:44:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 61,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8988619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnabokov/pseuds/mnabokov
Summary: A year after the events of Cuba, Charles Xavier receives a suspiciously heavy package addressed to him from Nicaragua. From there, he finds himself facing an organization worse than Shaw and struggles to protect the beginnings of his school, all while dealing with a man he never thought he’d see again.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Each atom in each cell will remember
> 
> the body it had made in this place, this time,  
> long after the rain flushes the river
> 
> to flood, long after this morning  
> when the country wakes to another war,
> 
> when two people wake in a house  
> and do not touch each other. 
> 
> — Sara Eliza Johnson, from “Deer Rub”

A tall man stands in front of a cracked counter, his worn and calloused fingers folding over the top of a thick manila envelope. It is November 13th, 1963.

The man, Caucasian, mid-thirties, slips the tip of his pink tongue from between his lips. With one hand, the man folds back the top of the envelope, and with the other, he brings the envelope to his mouth, swiping his tongue across the stripe of envelope glue. He closes the lip of the envelope after that, pressing down and sealing the package with the flat of his thumb.

He turns slightly, and nods to the man standing behind the cracked counter. The second man doesn’t spare the first anything more than a single glance; the second man holds out his hand, his expression bored, as the taller man drops the package into his waiting hand.

“How much?” the first man asks in Spanish.

The man behind the counter blinks slowly at the foreigner. Then his fingers tighten around the manila package as if he had forgotten it were there. He places the package onto a metal scale that sits on his desk. A second later, the worker scribbles out a number onto a slip and slides it across the counter.

Paper bills rustle against one another as the white man pulls out the exact amount of money. He slides it across the counter and pushes his wallet back into the back pocket of his worn jeans. As he waits for the worker to place a sticker on his package, the tall man rubs his palm down his thigh to remove some of the dirt from his hands, smearing grime onto his jeans. The worker slides open a drawer and pulls out a stamp; the foreigner slides his hand, which is significantly cleaner now than it was a few seconds ago, into his front pocket, his fingers sliding over a bullet in there, the motion smooth and unhurried as if he had performed it a hundred thousand times before.

After stamping the package, the worker jerks his head to signify completion.

“ _Gracias_ ,” rumbles the first man. The man behind the counter doesn’t acknowledge him verbally, but waves his hand vaguely instead.

The white man doesn’t seem to be bothered by this. He glances at the package before turning around, the heel of his bare foot sliding across tile with a small squeak.

“The door’s stuck. Push it hard,” the post office worker says in Spanish without looking, but as the first man walks to the door, it seems as though the metal door handle shudders before the man reaches for it. The door swings open easily and the worker places the thick manila package on a stack of flat envelopes.

The white man exits the post office, and walks through the city until he comes across a dirt road that leads into the green expanse of rural land beyond.

He is in the county of León, Nicaragua, outside of the city of the same name, walking along the single dirt road that leads through the countryside, meandering past greenery and sugar cane plantations. The road leads to the Pacific Ocean, unspooling over miles and miles of both farmland and arable lands yet to be farmed by the Nicaraguans living there.

All along the road, to the sides of the dirt, are clusters of homes, a mismatched collection of spare parts and spare materials, spread unevenly across the countryside in patches, most concentrated closely to the city and more sparsely scattered the further out the road stretches.

In a particular cluster of homes erected some way from the dirt road, a few miles outside of the city, there is a house. It’s a three-room house, made of brick walls that have been painted over with stucco, but the outermost layer has begun to peel around the edges, revealing the crumbling brick underneath. Moss climbs up the corners of the houses from the floor, flourishing in the humid air and the rain characteristic of this part of the country. A corrugated metal sheet decorated with curls of rust serves as a roof.

The kitchen of this house is only a kitchen in name; its dirt floor and stucco walls resemble the other two rooms in the house. There is no refrigerator and there is no stove. Right on top of the dirt floor is a brick structure that resembles a stove, except for the fact that there’s a sheet of blackened metal on top of the clay; planks of wood have been shoved underneath the metal sheet, on top of a blanket of ashes. An empty metal pot, the cheap kind made out of a thin sheet of aluminum, sits on top of the contraption.

There’s a wooden, rickety table in the middle of the room. One orange lies on the tabletop, its skin half peeled, rind curling delicately around coarse grains of unfinished wood.

The man walks into the kitchen, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. A map that’s pinned up on the wall across the room stares back at him. Bits of metal have been pinned to it, and there are scribbles of loopy writing all over it. The map covers peeling paint and smears of grime on the wall that was once was white.

He looks at the map for a long while, before turning away and sitting on an uneven stool by the table. He begins to peel the rest of the orange methodically, letting the rind spiral into a long curl before placing a segment into his mouth without relish.

With the blade of his tongue, the man crushes the orange segment, and then lets his eyes flutter shut. The scent of oranges fills the air.

Since the walls of the house are made of brick, for shelves, there are spaces where bricks should be, but aren’t, empty slots in the walls containing metal plates and metal pots, jícaro cups and salt.

The rest of the kitchen is sparsely stocked: there’s only a bag of beans and a bag of flour slouched against the wall, right by a large vat that normally holds water. The man glances at all of these things for a second before returning his attention to the map.

Thin pieces of metal resembling ends of paperclips protrude out of a city in Brazil, a city in Russia, and León, Nicaragua. The man sweeps his gaze from each one of these bits of metal to the other. He finishes his orange and heads further into the house, where he will enter a storage room that has been turned into his own bedroom, and where he will clamber onto his mattress and fall into a deep sleep.

A few miles away, in the city, a truck driver clambers into his vehicle. The engine starts with a loud splutter, and the truck spits out dark soot as it navigates through cobblestone streets, stopping with a metallic squeak in front of the city’s post office.

“Gerardo!” yells out the truck driver as he pushes at the front door, struggling to open it.

From his seat behind the counter, the office worker looks up. He scuttles across the cracked tile floor when he catches sight of the truck waiting outside through the metal bars that protect the post office’s window.

With their combined efforts, the door to the post office pops open. The truck driver lets out a stream of curses in Spanish. Ignoring his companion, the office worker turns around and heads back to his desk, grabbing a stack of envelopes from there, and then handing them off to the truck driver.

The office worker waves a hand in farewell as the truck driver clambers into his truck.

The truck driver grunts and places the stack of envelopes onto the leather of the passenger seat with a soft plop. The engine starts with a cough and the truck ambles through the city.

With every sharp turn, the manila envelope on top of the stack shifts slightly, until, some miles out of León, the driver sticks his head out of his window to make a rude gesture. The truck jolts across the road. The manila envelope slips and the truck driver catches it with a curse, rightening the wheel and subsequently straightening the truck once more.

As the truck continues north, towards the capital city of Managua, the driver leans over to place the manila envelope back on top of the pile in the passenger seat. As he does this, the crease of his thumbnail passes across one word in the address, which is written in dark blue ink: _Westchester_.

 

* * *

 

At the same time, a few thousand miles north, wind wafts through an open window on the third floor of a mansion in Westchester, New York, lifting the bottom of a gossamer curtain and causing a loose leaf of paper on a desk to rustle. A man lies supine on his bed, in this room, staring up at the ceiling.

“Charles?” someone calls, the voice carrying into the room, even through the closed door.

The man blinks in recognition.

The wind ruffles his hair. He blinks again.

Thin sheets rustle against warm skin when the man swings his legs over the side of his mattress and rises, stretching his arms tiredly. “Coming,” the man calls out.

A few minutes later, a few floors underneath the man’s room, a collection of people have congregated, moving cutlery and swinging open cabinets as they prepare breakfast.

“Good morning, everyone,” announces Charles Xavier as he pads into the kitchen, pulling the edges of his gray cardigan tight around him.

“Sleep well?” someone asks.

“Fine, thank you Raven,” Charles answers, and as he heads towards the wooden table in the center of the bustling kitchen, a boy with glasses hands him a steaming mug of coffee. “Splendid, Hank, thank you.”

“I made it though,” interjects a red-headed boy from where he stands by the kitchen’s countertop, stabbing viciously into a pile of pancakes.

“That’s why you shouldn’t drink it,” someone else says.

At that, Charles forces a smile while sliding into an empty chair at the table. “I’m sure it’s fine, Angel, no need to worry.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Raven says airily, “Don’t forget the _tacos_ ,” she makes air quotes with her fingers around the word, “Sean tried making last week.”

“I was trying to forget them,” mumbles Hank, from where he sits across from Charles.

“Me too,” agrees another voice. “They were the worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Alright, Alex, but just remember that you said that,” Sean decides to look up from his pancakes at this to speak. “Right Hank? Remember when – ”

And this is when Charles lets the conversation around him die down to a hum as he idly grates salt onto his plate. He is content to let the conversation flow around him without necessarily registering any of the words.

Across from him, Hank pushes his glasses further up his nose with one blue paw and, in order to delay answering Sean, reaches for his orange juice. At the same time, Raven decides that she’s bored of this particular argument. Raven turns to her brother.

“I found some stuff in the attic when I was cleaning it out this morning,” Raven says to Charles. He looks up at this and says, surprised, “Oh? I didn’t know you were cleaning.”

Raven rolls her blue eyes. “Yeah. You were asleep.” She huffs and digs a nail into her orange. “Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s just that you’ve been sleeping late more often lately, and so you don’t notice it when – ”

“Right,” Charles says.

Raven chews thoughtfully. “Sleep’s good for you. I would sleep more too, but I’m used to running in the morning now.”

“The attic,” Charles reminds, not meeting her gaze. He calmly pierces the yolk of another soft-boiled egg and watches the yellow insides spill across his plate.

“Right,” she says, “Well I found a camera that I think I could fix. It’d be nice to get it to work.”

“Really? I’ll have to have a look at it then,” Charles says, glancing up for a moment to look worriedly at the boys – Sean and Alex, who are arguing vehemently – before sending them a telepathic equivalent of a reminding hand on the shoulder. The two of them quell. “After I finish looking at Cerebro with Hank, that is,” Charles corrects himself, nodding to the boy across from him in acknowledgement.

“Sure,” Raven says easily, and she peels back her orange.

“Anyone want the last piece of French toast?” asks Angel around a mouthful of her breakfast, and half of the room rises to clamor.

Charles smiles into his coffee.

Breakfast concludes shortly after Alex and Hank split the last piece of French toast. Fortunately, the two of them have been getting along, more than before, at least, and Charles supposes progress is progress.

“I’ve been adjusting some of the materials in Cerebro,” Hank starts as he and the professor descend the stairs to the basement, where Hank has spent most of his time after Cuba, working away.

“And?” prompts Charles.

“No luck extending our range as of now, but I think, the next order of Radio Shack’s catalog should be coming in soon, and I’ll pick up a copy next time we’re in town. Maybe I can find some parts that could be useful.”

“And even with the current range,” contemplates Charles, “We’ve still got plenty to do.”

“Right,” Hank says, “I’d like to check up on Ororo again as well.”

“Of course,” Charles agrees. As an afterthought, he adds, “You’ve done a wonderful job, Hank.”

Hank opens the door to the basement, and they walk through the halls companionably.

“Do you think we can drive down to get her?” Hank asks, as they near the tangled nest of wires and scrap metal Hank has rebuilt Cerebro upon. “Soon?”

“I’d like to,” Charles says, stepping over the wires carefully.

“Do you think,” Hank starts slowly. He flips a switch on the makeshift control board and the metal in the room thrums with energy. Charles resolutely does not think of Erik Lehnsherr. “Do you think they’ll let her come?”

“Oh, yes,” Charles stands underneath the metal contraption roughly molded to the shape of his head, “I’m sure they will. The orphanage there will be more than happy to have some room in their crowded facilities. But,” he says, “I understand your hesitation. She is rather young.”

“I want her to come here,” Hank says, turning a metal knob and rapping his knuckles on the glass covering a meter. Underneath his touch, the red needle twitches. “But I’m just – ”

“We will care for her,” Charles says, his mouth set in a grim line as he reaches up to pull down the helmet, “Which is more than can be said about the place she’s in now.”

Hank nods once. “Ready?”

“Quite.”

When Hank pushes a final button, the world around Charles Xavier blurs for a second, the gray metal of the mess of wires and Cerebro blending into the blue hues of Hank and the white walls of the basement. Around him, the machine hums with energy and Charles slides his eyes shut at the familiar sound.

His mind reaches out over the miles easily, like stretching a muscle, before brushing against the bright mind of one Ororo Munroe.

“She’s fine,” Charles says aloud.

“Hold on,” Hank says. The boy turns around, nearly tripping over a wire with one furry foot in his haste to reach a scrap piece of paper. “Let me write down the coordinates.”

Charles says reassuringly, “Take your time,” and a moment later, Hank says, “Finished.”

The machine dies with a whisper, and Charles opens his eyes as he pushes the helmet off his head.

“She speaks English?” Hank asks, folding the paper precisely, mindful of his claws all the while.

“She grew up in Egypt,” Charles says. “But she’s young and she’s learning.” He sinks into a nearby chair tiredly and rubs his temple, not because he wants to reach out with his telepathy, but because he has a headache. He slouches in the chair and lets his arm fall. “A woman, she came to her. Found her while she was volunteering for the Peace Corps and brought her back to the States.”

“And left her in the orphanage.”

“And brought her to us,” Charles corrects himself. He looks at his student unseeing. “It’ll be worth it,” the professor says, albeit quieter. He looks away from Hank.

Charles looks at Cerebro, and even though the machine is powered off, Charles looks as though it will give him answers to all of his unspoken questions and cure the weight in his bones.

Hank, who has been watching the professor since the man stepped in to use Cerebro, opens his mouth to speak. But then, he thinks better of it. Better to leave the professor alone to his own thoughts, then, Hank thinks to himself. In these weeks following the events of Cuba, it seems as though this has become one of his stock decisions.

Aloud, the boy says, “I promised Alex I’d look at his suit again, Professor, I – I’ll be in the other lab if you need me.” Hank hopes that Charles cannot tell he is lying.

“Right,” Charles says, craning his neck back slightly to see the wires that sprout from Cerebro’s helmet, not unlike a head of hair.

When Hank exits the room, Charles decides that he should as well. But for the next few moments, there’s no moment in the room, save for the soft pattering of Hank’s feet on the floor as he leaves and the rise and fall of Charles’ chest; Charles remains sitting in his chair.

An indeterminable amount of time later, Charles rises with a soft breath. As he steps back over the tangle of wires, he ghosts his fingers over the controls of Cerebro. His eyes glaze over with a rather specific memory from the past; a few images flash through his mind – the curl of broad fingers over a metal banister, knuckles white with tension, a black typewriter furiously stamping out coordinates, and thousands upon thousands of mutants, their bodies shadows but their minds beacons, waiting for Charles, calling out to Charles – before Charles clamps down on that particular train of thought. He jerks his hand away from Cerebro and then turns around, heading back up the stairs to rejoin the rest of his students.

 

* * *

 

Sunlight glints over the Atlantic Ocean, winking off of blue waves like a thousand tiny diamonds blinking up at the sky in mockery of the stars. The blueness of the ocean remains uninterrupted for miles upon miles, until the Atlantic Ocean shifts into the Caribbean Sea, and two gray ships blow puffs of smoke into the air as they wait. It is October 28th, 1962, the last day of an event later to be named the Cuban missile crisis by historians.

One ship has a flag on its starboard side: red and white stripes and a blue corner strewn with stars. The other flies a red flag with a yellow hammer and sickle that remains limp in the breezeless afternoon. Although there is no noticeable sound, in the air there are radio frequencies being broadcasted from both ships.

In the Russian ship, a captain points to a map with a gnarled knuckle. The action causes his medals to clink against one another. Brushing the bone of his knuckle across the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, the captain draws a line from his homeland to the green tip of Florida, and then down to the stretch of yellow land that has been stamped over in black ink. It reads one word: Cuba.

A mere five hundred yards away, in front of a line of trees, a felled jet and a marooned submarine are breached upon a stretch of sand; their metal bodies from the point of view of both the US battleship and the Russian ocean liner resemble black and gray whales beached on a shore. Every face on both ships looks towards land.

From the belly of the marooned submarine, which is turned onto its side, steps out a man wearing a silver helmet, his face twisted with determination. His right hand is thrown out in front of him, levitating a corpse in front of him.

“Take off your blinders, brothers and sisters,” he says, “The real enemy is out there. I feel their guns moving in the water, their metal targeting us.” He looks at a man to his left. “Go on, Charles. Tell me I’m wrong.”

On the American ship, the captain says, “Fire.”

From both the Russian and American ships, missiles shoot into the crystal sky, smoke trailing behind them.

On the beach, the man in the silver helmet extends a hand, five fingers outstretched; the missiles halt in their paths, waiting in the air like hanging crib toys.

“There are thousands of men on those ships,” says the second man on the beach, his gloved hands twisting into fists, “Good, honest, innocent men! They’re just following orders.”

“I’ve been at the mercy of men just following orders,” replies the man with the helmet. In the sky, hundreds of missiles turn. “Never again.”

“Erik, release them!”

For a moment, the missiles retrace their paths, back to the ships. Then, the second man barrels into the first with ferocity.

The two of them fall into the sand in a mélange of limbs and sweat; the second man tries to remove the first’s helmet, but to no avail.

The man with the helmet slams a fist into the other man roughly; the missiles resume their journey across the sky as the man with the helmet stands.

From a few yards away, a woman emerges from the flank of the felled jet, her face pinched with determination and her gloved hands clutching a gun. In the heat of the Cuban sun, sweat pools at the dip of her neck, and her skin is unusually warm underneath her brown suit, but she shoots with determination.

The bullets rush into the air with sharp cracks, and, almost magically, the man with the silver helmet deflects them with quick movements of his hand. Two, three, five bullets fall to the floor harmlessly. Puffs of sand rise up when the bullets fall down.

“Erik!” yells a girl with red hair and blue skin, and the man with the silver helmet turns slightly, one hand still outstretched in the same motion used to levitate the corpse, to glance at her.

In this split moment of hesitation, the world seems to slow.

A thousand faces from the Russian and American ships watch the woman with the brown suit shoot a sixth bullet, which flies through the air.

Sunlight glints on this fateful bullet, and for a moment, the metal winks up flirtatiously at the sky, calling for the sun and calling for the clouds to watch as it moves through the warm air. The bullet lodges itself into the gut of the man with the silver helmet.

“Erik!” shouts the man sprawled across the sand.

Above the Russian and American ships, missiles rain down. Sunlight glints off of these bits of metal as well, winking at the thousand faces watching the debris fall from the sky.

On the beach, the man with the helmet collapses. A puff of sand rises up as he crumples to the ground.

The world snaps back to its regular speed: both the girl with the blue scales and the man covered with sand sprint across the beach, to where red blood oozes out over white sand.

“Erik,” the second man breathes out, and his heart hammers so loudly the clouds and the sun, their eyes fixed on the scene below, can hear. “Erik, I – ”

Two trembling fingers reach up and press up against a sweaty temple; the woman in the brown suit freezes, her gun still poised and ready to shoot.

“Charles, we have – we have to go, we can’t – ” says a beast with blue fur matted with sand and sweat; two scaly fingers reach up and press against blue lips, red hair glinting with sunlight as the girl with yellow, feline eyes shakes her head with disbelief.

“You did this,” the man with blue, blue eyes says, whirling around to look at the woman he froze, “You – ”

“Charles, we have to – ”

Two red fingers press against the bloody material of a flight suit that once was yellow; “I will take him,” rumbles a man with a red tail, the red blood indistinguishable against his red hands.

“Erik,” breathes out the girl with blue scales; two shaking fingers grab onto the silver lip of an ugly helmet.

“Do you know where – ” breathes out the second man; two trembling fingers reach up and press against a sweaty temple. The man concentrates. The man with red hands and red blood on his hands nods. Then, as if suddenly prompted, the rest of the figures on the beach move across the sand.

“We have to – ”

The second man clutches onto the fallen one with one hand, and then extends a palm up. A red hand meets a trembling one. Sunlight glints off of the metal of a silver helmet before there is a sudden cloud of black.

The figures on the beach disappear with an audible puff, leaving only five bullets and a pool of red blood on the white sand.


	2. Two

Across the grounds of Westchester mansion, the wind whispers worriedly to the oak trees, which murmur nervously amongst themselves. The grass shudders and shivers in waves and the entirety of the mansion holds its breath collectively. It is October 28th, 1962.

The air collects into a black cloud, condensing over the driveway that leads up to the house. A loud puff splits through the zephyr and a heap of limbs and tight G-suits and sand lands onto the driveway.

Charles had pressed the memory of Westchester into Azazel’s mind, the image so palpable it was almost as though Charles had taken a solid coin and pressed it into Azazel’s palm.

“Get inside,” Charles commands now, his voice ringing over the wind, which quiets down respectfully. “Take him inside, into the old guest room by the kitchen – Raven – ”

Hank, Raven, Sean, and Alex swarm around Erik’s pliant body before lifting him and carrying him inside. The man with the red tail, a girl with shimmering wings, and a man with long hair that comes to his chin hang awkwardly behind. A woman stands frozen behind the three of them, her hands holding up a gun. The others rush inside without glancing backwards at these four figures. A trail of blood leads up to the doorway.

Outwardly, he forces himself to remain composed, but inwardly, as he rushes inside, Charles’ head feels as though it’s wet clay, dripping into a miserable puddle. Thoughts from a mere few minutes ago are still freshly pressed into his mind like a fingerprint on wet cement: the horrible, excruciating pain of feeling a coin tear through his skull and thoughts; the fear of a thousand minds, which feels vaguely like a loud, muffled cry; the lightning sting of shock in Moira’s thoughts, _I hit him,_ she had thought before Charles completely froze that train of thought; and the terrifying sound of metal hitting flesh, a bullet straight to Erik’s gut.

“There, put him – yes, Hank – ”

There’s a clatter as Hank sweeps silver candlesticks and dusty photo frames off of a nightstand next to the perfectly pressed bed that Alex and Sean place Erik on. Raven rushes over immediately, pressing two hands around the wound to stem blood flow.

“Charles – ” Hank starts. Then he closes his mouth shut with a snap, his nostrils flaring, his hand trembling as he brings it halfway to his temple.

“What is it,” Charles bites out, stepping close, fumbling with the gloves of his G-suit. He does not want to read Hank’s thoughts at the moment; his own mind is too turbulent and Charles does not trust his composure.

Hank darts a tongue out to lick his lips; behind him, Raven and Sean begin tearing the material of the G-suit off; Alex has hurried upstairs to grab cotton balls and a first-aid kit. Hank moves to a corner of the room and Charles follows. “Hurry,” Charles says, his voice uncharacteristically sharp.

Hank’s paw trembles as he reaches up to push his glasses up his nose. “I don’t know if I can – ”

“You can,” Charles snaps, grabbing onto Hank’s blue wrist, “You can. You _must._ ”

“But,” Hank rumbles lowly, so the others won’t hear, so lowly in fact, that only a few words make it through his fangs, “Wouldn’t it be – more qualified – hospital?”

“No,” Charles says emphatically, tearing his eyes away from where Sean hunches over Erik, “You will do it here.”

Upstairs, Alex fumbles with a mahogany cabinet, yanking it open desperately, scooping out all of the materials inside. His lips part in concentration and he ignores the sand in his gloves, the sand in his G-suit, the sand underneath his tongue.

Outside of the mansion, on the gravel driveway, the man with a tail wraps his red thumb and forefinger around the other man’s wrist. The first man leans in close and murmurs, “Janos, Emma would’ve – ”

The other man, Janos, dips his head smoothly, his chin almost touching the silky material of his black tie.

The first man looks at Janos for a moment, then turns behind him and extends a hand.

The girl with wings nods as well, her lips pressed into a worried line, and takes the teleporter’s hand. The three of them disappear with a puff, leaving the woman with the gun frozen on the gravel, her expression still pinched with determination.

Inside the guest room on the first floor of the mansion, Charles’ concentration unfurls like a fist unfurling into five fingers. In the back of his mind, he feels his grip on the woman loosen and he unclenches his teeth forcibly, letting her mind slide from between his fingers with a hiss. He worries that his concentration will dissolve soon and his mind will do things to the woman that he will regret.

Alex barrels into the room, dumping the things he has found onto the empty nightstand. “Tell me what to do,” he demands from Hank.

“Scissors and a knife, from the kitchen,” Hank demands and Alex goes without another word. Inwardly, Hank wishes for a scalpel but he knows that he’s working with limited materials and even more limited time now.

“And us,” Sean says.

To Sean, Hank says, “Hold the G-suit open so I can – yes, like that – make sure the sides don’t touch – good – ”

To Raven, Hank says, “Press here, don’t use too much – a little to the left – right there – ”

“Come inside, Moira,” Charles grits out, just as the last of his control over her dissolves into worry.

On the driveway, Moira blinks, and then gasps, her gun dropping from where it was pointed straight in front of her. She staggers forward, then promptly vomits on the driveway.

Inside, Charles turns away from where his students bend over Erik, helping Hank as much as they can.

Perhaps he was wrong to bring Erik here, but Charles knows that if he’d pressed a memory of a hospital into Azazel’s mind, and if Erik had somehow regained consciousness in that sterile place, the outcome would be far, far worse.

At least, that was his split decision at the time. But now, there is blood – so much blood, red and thick, on Hank’s fur and Raven’s scales and Charles’ hands, literally and figuratively; Charles tangles his dusty fingers into his hair and twists _hard_ , willing himself to regain control and regain composure; his students need him now, more than ever. Perhaps Hank directs them surely, but their minds are still raw with shock and worry.

Charles bites down on his lip, turning around as Moira staggers into the guest room.

“Charles – I didn’t – ”

“I need,” Charles begins, “You to forget.”

She blanches. “I won’t tell anyone, Charles, I – ”

“I know,” Charles breathes out. He unthreads his fingers from his hair and then clenches them into fists. “Help Hank.”

Moira nods, lips white, and heads into the kitchen, where she saw Alex gathering things for Hank.

Perhaps, sometime in the future, Charles will saturate with anger, or maybe regret; maybe his hands will tremble and reach for his temple, picking certain memories from Moira’s mind and leaving only sunlight behind, but for now, he is no longer in control of himself; the sound of metal hitting flesh and the smell of blood still presses into the forefront of his mind, and he lets Moira slip into the kitchen.

“Charles – ” Hank calls and Charles goes immediately.

“How – ”

“We need more,” Hank says lowly, “Antibiotics and a scalpel – Professor,” Hank’s voice takes on a strangled tone, “I – ”

“Hank,” Charles cuts through Hank’s low rumbles cleanly. The professor does not continue.

In the kitchen, Alex and Moira scramble to find something suitable for Hank to use. Like Charles, Alex does not have the energy nor the time to draw out the anger from within himself. He feels a surge of some unidentifiable emotion at the thought of seeing Erik pale and bloodless; he redoubles his efforts, furrowing his brow and going through the cabinets and shelves quicker.

A puff of air is all the warning they get.

Moira’s hand flies to her gun; Alex feels energy thrumming inside of himself.

“Wait!” a voice calls out.

Another puff of air and then the two figures on either side of the girl who spoke disappear.

“Angel,” Moira says evenly, but her fingers tighten around her holster.

 _Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage with that today_ , Angel wants to ask, but she clamps down on the temptation. She holds up the packages of antibiotics, gauze, and other medical supplies. “For Erik.”

Alex stands down. He jerks his head towards the guest room, and the three of them hurry there without another word.

In this room, the group of them linger for several hours, one or the other occasionally sent out to gather more things. The man with the red tail teleports in and out several times, carrying more supplies. No one gives any outward indication of the fact that the same red-tailed man tried to kill several of them just a few hours before.

Together, in spur-of-the-moment shifts, they take care of Erik for more than twenty-four arduous hours. The teleporter and his friend leave around eight hours after this, after Hank throws up two bloody paws and declares Erik stable.

During this twenty-four hour period, Hank gets essentially no sleep. His eyes, tinged with redness and exhaustion, stare down at Erik’s wound and his pulse, and his claws wrap clean gauze delicately around warm skin.

Charles stands vigil in the corner of the room. The beginnings of his composure have begun to come back to him, but he remains shaken by the sudden rift in his undeniable friendship with one Erik Lehnsherr.

Angel stays, and although no one comments on it, Sean and Alex shift uncomfortably every time she enters the same room as them.

Moira stays as well, and, as with Angel, the residents of the Xavier mansion have no strength within themselves to become angry.

Instead, they linger. They flit in and out of the guest room, and, as they sit in the living room or make their way up to their respective rooms, they flit in and out of sleep, resting when they can.

“That’s it, then,” Charles says, clapping a hand on Hank’s shoulder when the latter finally says that Erik’s blood level has stabilized.

“Not quite,” Hank grimaces.

“Get some sleep before you pass out. I’ll wake you if anything changes.”

Hank dips his head in agreement and heads upstairs without further argument. He reaches his room and collapses onto his bed, falling asleep without bothering to remove his eyeglasses.

 

* * *

 

Darkness creeps over the east coast of America, into the state of New York, into the Westchester mansion, and into the guest room of the first floor. At night, the moon hangs high. The shadow of an oak tree stretches into the guest room, dark outlines of leaves moving eerily, silently, across the carpeted floor and across the figure in the bed. It is November 1st, 1962.

A cloud of air condenses into darkness; air puffs and a man with a red tail materializes out of the darkness.

To the left of the bed, a red-haired boy slumps over in a chair, snoring gently.

The man steps into the room, walking until he reaches the right side of the bed. His shadow stretches over the prone form of another man, who sleeps on the bed.

The first man watches the second carefully for a moment. His tail rises like the head of a cobra, slithering through the air; its thin shadow stretches across the sleeping man’s face. The blade of the tail looks like a knife.

In the corner of the room, a silver candlestick that has been shoved to the floor shudders violently against the carpet.

The devilish tail waits over the sleeping man, poised right over the exposed skin of a throat. The candlestick lurches and rises into the air unnaturally; its handle ripples silently and melts, dripping down the edges to form a sharp point at the base.

For a long moment, the room is still.

Then, the man on the bed murmurs, “Azazel.”

The red tail flicks in recognition, before sinking back down, out of sight.

“Lehnsherr.”

The man on the bed opens his eyes. The candleholder sinks to the floor without a sound “Why are you here?”

Azazel cocks his head curiously. “Shaw is dead.”

“I killed him.”

“You killed him,” Azazel agrees.

Shadows dance across both of their expressionless faces eerily. The neck of the boy in the chair droops a little lower, like a drooping lily.  He sleeps on, oblivious to the conversation beside him.

“I think I should tell you something you’d want to know,” Azazel says finally.

A soft snort escapes from between the sleeping boy’s lips; the other two men freeze, then turn their heads to look. A moment passes. The two men look back each other.

“Come back tomorrow night. And every night after that, at midnight. Wait by the oak tree. If I don’t come to you by the end of the week, don’t come back again.”

“Fine,” Azazel says.

The man on the bed closes his eyes. Azazel flicks his tail, eyes raking over Erik Lehnsherr, before he disappears in a cloud of blackness.

 

* * *

 

A fire crackles in the second-largest bedroom of Westchester mansion. An ornate armchair creaks as a man in a cardigan sinks into his seat in front of a chessboard. It is November 2nd, 1962.

Charles’ eyes flutter shut just as the door creaks open.

“Are you well enough to be up and walking?”

“Well enough,” Erik rasps. He limps across the room, clamping down methodically on his pain, and sinks into the cushioned armchair across from the other man.

Outwardly, it seems as though nothing has changed. Erik sits across from Charles sits across from Erik. The chess pieces sit quietly on the chessboard. The fire sits obediently in the fireplace, popping gently. It could be September 30th or October 3rd, or any time before the Cuban missile crisis. But it is not; it is the last night before Erik leaves.

Charles doesn’t look up to meet Erik’s gaze and the two of them do not speak. Something has shifted in the air and the room seems infinitely larger. Charles, although he is not used to entering Erik’s mind, pulls his mental wards tighter around himself, so he won’t inadvertently absorb any of Erik’s emotions. Erik looks down at the chessboard, thoughts turning in his head like a thousand metal missiles turning in the Cuban sun.

After several rounds, Charles takes Erik’s queen.

“Check,” he says.

“Charles,” Erik begins.

But Charles does not want to listen. Even more than twenty-four hours after the events on that Cuban beach, Charles’ mind still feels structureless, like wet clay, and emotions weave between his thoughts, strands of betrayal, remorse, anger, fear threading in between his memories of a thousand fearful minds, a white-hot lightning bolt of fear, and the sound of metal embedding itself into flesh. Perhaps, given time, Charles will pull these threads together and the red heat underneath his skin will subside, but for now, he closes off his mind, unwilling to let any of the turmoil show.

“Charles,” Erik says again, “I – ”

“I can’t,” Charles says, “I can’t do this, not right now, my friend. I’m sorry. I’m – I’m not very good company tonight.”

The air between them is raw and sore like a bruise, blood collected close to the skin, sensitive and tender to every touch. A few minutes pass before either of them speaks again.

Charles reaches across the board. He pushes his queen forward. “Checkmate.”

Erik exhales shakily, slowly, one hand still pressed against his ribs. Charles plucks the piece from the board with two fingers; the black king disappears into his fist.

“I don’t think there’s anything left for me to say,” Erik says.

When Charles replies, his voice trembles with quiet anger. “Oh, your actions at the beach spoke loudly enough.” He stares at the chessboard unseeing.

“Are you angry?”

“With you?”

“Are you?”

Charles laughs bitterly, shaking his head. “No, my friend. I am not.” His fingers clench around the chess piece. “I’m angry at myself.”

Erik stares across the chessboard.

“I didn’t see this coming soon,” Charles says, more to himself than anyone else. “I’m angry because I didn’t – Christ.” Charles sits back in his chair. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes for the second time that night.

“I should go,” Erik says. Charles does not reply; instead, he stares into the fire, lost in the cacophony of his own thoughts.

“Good night, Erik,” Charles remembers where he is after Erik rises slowly, as Erik walks to the door.

“Goodbye, Charles,” Erik replies. The man still sitting down is so fully distracted by his thoughts that he doesn’t register his friend’s choice of words until much, much later.


	3. Three

A gravel road meanders through green grass and trees, wandering through Westchester County before climbing up to an enormous mansion. A car ambles along this gravel road, up the gravel driveway. It is November 20th, 1963. It’s been a week since Hank McCoy had written down the coordinates to find Ororo Munroe.

The car that rumbles up the gravel driveway carries Sean Cassidy, Charles Xavier, and Ororo Munroe in its belly; the three of them have just gone into town to purchase ice cream on this hot afternoon.

Ororo, five years old with electric eyes, licks the last bit of sugar from her thumb, pink tongue flicking out to swipe at her brown finger.

“We better get these catalogs to Hank,” Sean comments cheerfully. “He’s been complaining about parts for a week.”

“The entire week,” Charles agrees.

“Hank,” agrees Ororo. Charles smiles at her.

After the car is parked in the garage, the three of them climb out and head into the mansion.

“Come on, Ororo,” Sean calls to her, the two of them sprinting up the gravel driveway, clutching onto catalogs in their hands. They race to see who will reach Hank first.

Charles chuckles at them and locks the car with a click. He strolls across the gravel leisurely, plucking his mail – two thin envelopes and a thick manila package – out of his mailbox before heading upstairs into his study.

“We’re back,” Charles says, rapping his knuckles on Raven’s door when he walks by her room. “Sean left your things in the kitchen.”

“Thank you,” comes the muffled reply.

Charles tucks a loose strand of his hair behind his ear. He thinks he will need a haircut soon.

Charles steps into the cool study room. Out of all the rooms at the Xavier mansion, this one is Charles’ favorite: its high glass windows allow sunlight to filter in, and offer a rather nice view of the grounds to whoever sits at the mahogany desk.

The professor slides into his seat, the material of his sleeve brushing against varnished mahogany as he does so. The mail lands on his desk with a plop.

After working through a tall pile of rather lengthy paperwork involving the opening of a school, Charles finally rubs his eyes tiredly.

Almost subconsciously, Charles extends his thoughts out, into the mansion, just barely brushing against the minds of each inhabitant, to reassure himself of the students’ safety. Everyone’s engaged in all their routinely activities: Raven unfolds her new clothes from a cardboard box in the kitchen, Sean, Angel, and Ororo have wandered into the garden, Alex keeps Hank company in the basement.

After nearly three hours of working in silence, Charles stretches, letting out a low groan as he clenches and unclenches his tight muscles. Charles lets his hands fall onto the desk with a soft thud. Only then does he reach for his mail.

He skims through the two letters in the thin envelopes before pushing them aside to answer later. Then he reaches for the thick manila envelope.

The package has not been handled with care: the corners are bent, the edges pinched, and the papery material wrinkled from international travel. Charles runs a hand over the wrinkles before turning the package over in his hands to read the address.

The return address is a post office in the city of León, Nicaragua. Charles frowns. The package is obviously for him – it’s addressed to Charles Xavier – but the professor doesn’t remember having any correspondents in Central America.

Interest piqued, Charles runs a finger underneath the lip of the envelope, ripping opening the package loudly.

Inside the package is a folder.

The folder, like the manila envelope it came in, is dented from its journey. It’s a cheap folder, with no labels and no identification. Charles pulls off a metal clip that fastens the folder shut and pulls out a thick stack of papers easily.

The first sheet of paper is covered in red ink, blocky letters stamped diagonally across the sheet: _oficial_.

“Spanish?” Charles murmurs to himself. A crease forms between his eyebrows.

He flips to the next page. _Información_ , the heading in bold reads. Charles’ frown deepens.

There’s a photo of Charles, taken at one of his talks at Oxford. Underneath, printed in black ink, is information regarding his name, age, weight, and physical description. _Lugar de residencia: Westchester, NY,_ it says. There’s a little more Charles can ascertain with his measly knowledge of Spanish, but it’s obvious that someone has been collecting information on him. Charles flips the page.

There are photos of him – at Oxford, in New York City – and there’s a copy of his thesis; there are photos of a grainy beach in Cuba. Charles flips the page. _Información_ , a bold heading reads. Underneath it is a photo of Sebastian Shaw. There are photos of Shaw, Azazel, Emma Frost. Charles’ heart accelerates as he continues flipping through the folder, his gaze flitting over information on mutants printed across pages and pages. He spends less time on each page; by the time he flips open to a page of his sister, he’s practically flipping through the folder with a thumb, black ink blurring like a flipbook.

Charles slams the folder shut. His heart pounds in his chest.

Charles does not know who sent him this folder.

The metal clip that clasps the folder shut has been ornately molded into a curl.

After a long while, sitting at the desk, staring down at the closed folder, Charles rises shakily. He goes downstairs.

At the same time across the world, one of the world’s most powerful mutants drives down a dirt road in the country of Nicaragua, speeding across a bridge and into the bustling town of León. Erik Lehnsherr’s jeans rub against the warm metal of his motorcycle. Underneath him, his bike hums easily.

He enters the city with his hair windswept and his eyes blinking. His bike rumbles over cobblestone streets, bumping up and down slightly. The sounds and smells of the city rise up to greet him in a cloud; traffic crescendos in a cacophony, everywhere, people shout from behind street vendors, and the smell of gas and frying oil fills the air.

The sun beats down relentlessly as Erik navigates through the narrow streets with ease. Around him, the colorful paints of houses reflect the sun, almost annoyingly vibrant: bright yellow, green, blue, and pink paint show where each house ends and the other one begins. Bright as the colors are, the paint has begun to peel back, revealing the white stucco and red brick underneath. On the tops of the walls and the roofs of the houses and shops, broken glass from glass Coca-cola bottles has been stuck into the cement or brick or whatever material to prevent birds from nesting.

Erik weaves through buses and cars before finally slowing his engine down. He drives past a clean bank and parks his bike a few houses down. He turns and crosses the street, wiping his sweaty hands on his dirty jeans. After several weeks under the relentless Nicaraguan sun, the skin of his shoulders, pink and blistering, unprotected by his thin wifebeater, has begun to peel.

“ _Buenos dias!_ ” call out the street vendors, who congregate on a corner of the street. Erik nods his head in greeting.

In front of the first vendor he passes, which is a bicycle food cart selling soft drinks and cold beers, a woman in a plastic chair sits, fanning herself. She glances at Erik as he passes by. The second stand sells peanuts and _chicharrones:_ fried bits of pork rind. The third stand has two metal carts set up at the corner of the street. On top of the two carts are whole, ripe mangoes, almost completely covering the silver surface underneath. And on top of the whole mangoes, wedged into the gaps between them, are plastic bags of mango strips, long and sweet and yellow.

Erik greets the woman who owns the two carts.

She smiles tentatively at him.

Reaching into his pocket, Erik pulls out two leafs of paper. He places them onto one of the carts and takes a bag of cut mangos.

“ _Gracias_ ,” she says, taking the money.

Behind one of the carts sits a blue, plastic stool. Erik walks over to this stool and, with a plastic spoon, scoops out coarse salt grains from a container that sits on the stool. Then he takes the plastic squeeze bottle, which still has its Coca-cola label wrapped around it, and puts some of the homemade pepper juice that the woman has mixed into his bag of mango slices.

A little ways down the street, still across from the bank, Erik finds a little alcove in front of an abandoned garage. He sits down on the concrete step and pulls a mango slice from his bag.

Before long, he slouches down against the wall, his spine curled so that his shoulders press against the metal of the garage behind him, legs sprawled carelessly in front of him. His posture may be casual but he watches the doors of the bank across from him intently. Motorcycles and cars and buses drive by on the cobblestone road; pedestrians walk by, some hurried and some relaxed, some carrying plastic bags and others worn backpacks.

After a handful of minutes, Erik’s eyes narrow.

The door of the bank swings open with a noticeable jingle.

A man with clean khakis, a leather belt, and a white fedora walks out of the box. The man throws an arm up, beckoning at a boy who pushes a cycle rickshaw over.

In Spanish, the rich man asks, “Can you take me to the Hotel de Valencia?”

Erik doesn’t wait to listen to the rest of the exchange; he sits up immediately and heads towards his bike, putting the last piece of mango into his mouth and crumpling the plastic bag into a ball.

His motorcycle starts with a purr and Erik pushes off, heading down the cobblestone road. He passes the street vendors and the colorful buildings, driving past the post office and the church, until he exits the main part of the city. Cobblestone streets give way to dirt roads and Erik drives past the air markets in the suburbs, past wooden stands of watermelon, papayas, mangoes, and melons.

Eventually, Erik drives past the farmer’s markets and the landscape gives way to lush greenery. Ahead of him, a cycle rickshaw drives along the bumpy road, heading towards a clean white structure. _Hotel de Valencia_ reads the sign in front of the hotel.

The rickshaw pulls over, driving into the hotel’s cement parking lot. Erik drives on, although he watches the passenger exit the back and dust his pants.

Erik drives his motorcycle over the concrete bridge, the water rushing loudly underneath.

Behind him, the Hotel de Valencia looks over the rushing river, its stilts digging into the riverbank. The clean wooden structures rise straight out of the ground.

Erik crosses the bridge, swerving off the road and into the grass as soon as he reaches the other side. His engine dies without a sound.

For a moment, Erik watches them. He puts his hand into his pocket and feels a heavy bullet there. Then his engine starts again, and Erik continues down the dirt road, away from the river and away from the well-maintained hotel. The dust swirls in his wake.

 

* * *

 

“It’s him. It has to be.”

“How do you know?” protests Charles. “We don’t even know what this is.”

“It’s him,” Raven insists. She leans against the mahogany material of Charles’ desk. Across the room, Hank sits on a spare chair, thumbing through the pages of the folder. He looks carefully through the papers. He hesitates on the one with a photo of Raven. What Hank notices, and what he does not voice aloud, is that there is no photo of himself and there is no photo of Erik Lehnsherr.

“You’re right,” Raven acquiesces, “We don’t know what this is, but it can’t be good.”

Charles rubs his temple. For the better part of twelve months, he has tried to push all thoughts of Cuba and Erik out of his mind. After the man left, Charles has no tried to contact him.

“I know,” Raven interrupts Charles’ thoughts, “I know you don’t want to talk to him – ”

“I don’t,” Charles agrees the same time Hank mutters, “He doesn’t.”

“You don’t want to talk to him but we need to ask what this is about. These are all mutants, Charles, don’t tell me it doesn’t worry you.”

Charles does not answer. Anger, betrayal, and hurt that has been ruthlessly clamped down on so Charles can better concentrate on his school suddenly expands in his chest, filling his lungs.

“We can use Cerebro,” Raven says confidently. Out of all of them, she was the one quickest to forgive the man in question; so quick, in fact, that perhaps, in her mind, there was nothing to forgive at all.

“Can’t,” Hank rumbles. “There’s no way I can extend Cerebro’s range that far.”

“Write him a letter.”

“No return address.”

“And,” Charles shifts in his seat uncomfortably, “It’s too risky. What would we even say?”

“If only Azazel stayed,” murmurs Raven under her breath, but Shaw’s henchmen, minus Angel, disappeared soon after Erik left. Raven does not know if they’re with Erik or not.

Hank thinks that now would be an opportune time to utilize the CIA’s resources, but, a while ago, Moira was sent off with a few less memories .

Charles rubs his temple again.

“We shouldn’t do anything rash until we’ve a better understanding of what’s going on right now,” Charles says diplomatically. “We don’t know how relevant this file is to anything, so – ”

“So we just wait here,” Raven frowns.

“Yeah,” Hank says.

“I don’t see why we can’t just send something to the post office. He’s bound to check, after sending this folder,” Raven says.

Hank reasons, “We don’t even know if he’s going by Erik there.”

“So we wait. And do nothing.”

Hank turns to look at Charles, who has sunk further into his cushioned armchair.

“Come on,” Hank murmurs to Raven, taking her arm carefully.

“No, Hank, it’s obvious that whoever put together this file – ”

“Not now.”

Raven narrows her eyes at Charles, who says nothing. She and Hank exit the study without bidding Charles farewell.

The two students walk down the stairs silently.

“You can go,” Raven tells the boy, “I’m going to find Ororo.”

“But,” Hanks begins.

“It’s fine, Hank.”

Raven turns away, her blond curls bouncing slightly as she walks down the hallway. Hank watches her go.

Back in the study room, Charles stares at the chessboard in front of him, his eyes gaunt. A thousand thoughts and memories turn over in his head and an ugly mélange of emotions stews in his belly. He stares at the black king for a long while, before finally plucking it from the board with his thumb and forefinger.

The black king disappears into Charles’ fist.

Charles’ mouth flattens into a thin line as anger suddenly bubbles up in his chest. Charles lunges forward, pushing the chess pieces off the board with his forearm. They fall into a cardboard box that Charles holds by the lip of the desk. Charles slides the lid back onto the box and sinks back into his seat.

 

* * *

 

About a week later, the sun slides below the horizon, orange light draining from a crumbling home somewhere outside of the city of León. It is November 25th, 1963.

“Like that?” asks a boy.

“Like that,” agrees a man, in Spanish as well.

“Can you – a horse?”

“Yes.”

The man twists his fingers, the last dregs of sunlight framing his movements. On the rickety table, a sheet of aluminum folds itself into a neighing stallion, reared up on its two hind legs, mane frozen in a ripple.

Ten fingers reach out and touch the metal horse – the crescent of a nail against the horse’s flank, the pad of a thumb against a hoof, a tiny pinky finger running down a rippling mane.

“A dog,” the boy requests. Normally, he does not speak much, but today, wonder sets his eyes ablaze.

Fingers twist and the horse melts into a dog, not unlike the ones found roaming the streets in Nicaragua, its ribs visible underneath its metal skin.

The boy stares at the metal in delight.

“Your turn.”

The boy looks up.

“Me?”

“You.”

The boy shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“Try.”

The boy looks at the man curiously.

“Go on,” the man gestures towards the table. Next to the miniature dog is a cup of salt. “A circle,” the man requests. With one finger, he draws a flat circle onto the table surface.

The boy mirrors the movement, but as he does so, a train of salt marches from its cup to follow the boy’s finger, leaving a perfect, grainy circle on the tabletop.

“A square.”

The boy draws a square onto the surface of the table and the salt grains follow willingly.

“A cow,” the boy demands.

Dog shifts into cow. The boy claps his hands.

“Dante,” calls a third voice, “Max?”

“We’re in here,” answers the man.

A woman steps into the house, foot clearing the threshold and stepping into the kitchen. “Dante, did you – oh.” Her eyes fall on the bits of metal and bits of salt on the table.

“I hung up all the clothes,” the boy pipes up. “Max was just showing me how to move – ”

“Yes,” the woman says airily, dropping her bags onto the dirt floor and walking over to the brick stove. She reaches up and undoes her bun. The starchy material of her white uniform crinkles in the back. “I can see that. Did Fernán bring dinner over for us?”

“I finished up early in the shop today,” the man explains. “Thought I’d come back early.”

The woman’s hair falls loosely around her shoulders.

“We ate already,” continues the man. He jerks his head towards the stove. “That’s for you.”

The woman’s mouth curls in relief, her bones aching from a long day of work. “Oh.”

She pulls the plate from off the stove and goes over to join the man and the boy at the table.

They sit around the rickety table, filling up three mismatched chairs. Dante brushes salt from the table, back into the cup, and swipes the metal cow from the table, tucking it into his pocket.

From the white pocket of her uniform, the woman pulls out a letter. She pushes it across the table and Dante’s brown fingers reach for the envelope. “From Grandmother.”

Dante tears apart the envelope carefully – he will use the paper to write with later – and unfolds his letter.

To the man, the woman continues, “It’s odd, you know, I was in the post office today,” she tears off a bit of tortilla with her fingers and swipes it in her beans, “Gerardo got a strange package today.”

“Addressed to him?” The man watches Dante run a finger along inky lines.

“To the office, actually.”

“Hm,” says the man, half-interested. In Dante’s pocket, the cow melts into three metal coins.

“A game of sorts, or something.” The woman places the bit of food into her mouth. “Funny, isn’t it.”

“What?”

“A man in the market told me – oh, you know him, the one who sells _chicharrones_ on the corner between the bank and the church – you would think he has nothing else to do all day except gossip.”

“You would think,” the man agrees mindlessly.

A while passes.

“You don’t mind if I head to bed?” the woman asks, finishing her dinner.

“Go sleep,” the man says, turning back to face Dante. “We’re fine.”

“Wake me if you need anything,” the woman says, walking over to press a kiss against her brother’s temple, and then brushing past the man. She smells like laundry detergent and air freshener as she passes into another room in the house.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, the man wakes early.

“I’m not going into the fields today, Dante,” he tells the boy in Spanish, who rubs his eyes blearily. “Tell your sister I’m going into town.”

His motorcycle purrs as he drives down the dirt streets, and Erik navigates his way to the post office and pushes the door open easily.

There’s another worker today, a thin man, sitting behind the counter, scribbling something onto a scrap piece of paper.

“I heard about a strange package you got,” Erik rumbles, walking up to the counter.

“What’s it to you,” the man asks, barely looking up from his paper.

Erik drops a white envelope onto the man’s counter. “How much?”

On a leaf of paper, the worker writes out a number and slides it across the desk.

From his pocket, Erik pulls out the appropriate amount of money and hands it over.

“What is it?”

“How am I supposed to know,” the worker drawls. “Feel free to look if you want.” He gestures towards a cardboard box sitting at the end of the counter.

Erik walks over to the box. “You got this yesterday?”

“Hm,” the worker agrees, stamping something onto the envelope before dropping it onto another pile. “No return address.”

“I know what this is.”

“What?” the worker asks.

“ _Chess_ ,” Erik says, and it’s been a long time since he’s spoken in English; his tongue curls around the foreign word.

“ _Chess_ ,” repeats the worker as well, and for a moment, they’re both quiet.

Erik looks over the wooden pieces and his chest tightens. “Do you want me to show you how to play?” Erik asks, looking up at the other man.

For a moment, the worker considers refusing. But then, he grins and says, “Only because I’ve nothing better to do.”

They pull out the plastic table and chairs from the closet and sit underneath the window, which is barred by iron bars. Outside, the sounds of the street waft in: cars and conversation, loud voices and rumbling engines.

Erik sets up the board quickly. After he fishes the last piece from the cardboard box, he frowns down at the board.

“What?” asks the worker.

“There’s a piece missing.”

The worker rolls his eyes and falls back into his chair. He groans. “Whoever sent it didn’t even have the decency to send us the whole game.”

“No decency,” Erik agrees, but his eyes remain fixed on the empty spot where the black king should be.

 

* * *

 

Rain sprinkles down, falling onto the green grass of the Xavier mansion’s garden. A girl waves her small fingers and then the rain dissolves into nothingness. The clouds above her disappear and she smiles up at a glass window three stories above her. It is November 26th, 1963.

Raven waves her hand back at Ororo through the glass, from where she stands in Charles’ study. It’s been six days since she last stood here, staring down at a grainy photo of herself, a single sheet of paper in a folder of information.

Now, she looks down at Ororo Munroe and Sean Cassidy, the two of them playing with Ororo’s powers. Sean’s hair drips rainwater into his eyes but he smiles widely at Ororo. At this, Raven smiles as well.

In the same study, sitting at the desk and running his thumb over a Nicaraguan coin, is a man.

An envelope, addressed to one Charles Xavier, sits on the man’s desk, ripped open, the ink on the front smudged with sweat and humidity.

“A Nicaraguan coin,” repeats Alex Summers.

“Yeah,” Hank says. “Look, I have the encyclopedia – ”

“Alright, man, I believe you,” Alex turns away, not wanting to look at any encyclopedia.

At his desk, Charles turns the metal coin over in his hand. On one side, the face of Hernández de Córdoba has been stamped onto the metal. On the other side, however, the material has been smoothed over. Instead of a sunlit mountain range, a series of numbers is printed on the coin.

Life at the mansion has settled down in the last few months, and, after the dramatic events of Cuba and the following days, the inhabitants of the Xavier mansion have begun to pull themselves together – although some more than others.

Charles does not want to disturb this shallow peace; he’s put away his emotions, shelving them high up, to deal with his students and with the school. But now, after receiving a manila package and this silver coin, Charles feels them simmer.

“It must be where he is,” Alex says. His arms are crossed over his chest.

“Sure,” Raven says, “Probably. But what are we going to do about it?”

Hank pushes his glasses up his snout. “It’s dangerous. It’s reckless.”

“But – ”

“It’s more than a thousand miles away, Raven,” Charles speaks for the first time since summoning everyone into his study. “And we’re doing good here. We’re building a school here, and – ”

“No,” she says quietly, “ _You’re_ doing good here.”

Then, Alex speaks. “I don’t like this.”

“Do you think we do?” Hank says.

“I don’t like this,” he repeats, “But we need to do something. You know,” he inhales, “You know Erik,” it’s the first time Alex’s said his name for a while, “He wouldn’t send something like this unless it was real.”

“We don’t know – ” Charles says.

“It’s him,” interrupts Raven.

“We need to do something,” Alex concludes.

Charles turns towards him disbelievingly.

“If this – if this is real,” Alex says, “It won’t go away, Professor. I think you know that.”

“I’ll go,” Raven says.

“I can stay,” Hank says and then a moment later, Hank thinks that maybe that wasn’t needed. He pushes his glasses up again.

Alex recrosses his arms. “I want to go.” Although he won’t admit it, he feels a fierce surge of protectiveness when Erik’s name comes up; he cares for Erik, much more than his friends know, and he’s forgiven Erik. He was hurt by Erik’s departure because Alex, unlike Hank or Sean, got to know Erik; but Alex, unlike Raven, did not fully believe in the same things that the man did.

“Sean thinks we should go,” Charles frowns, fingers sliding away from his temple. He’d been telepathically including Sean in on the whole conversation. “But we’re not going.”

“It wouldn’t take long,” Raven says shrugging.

Hank speaks. “If you decide to go, and I’m not saying you should, but if you do, we’d be fine here on our own.”

“If I were leaving, and I am not,” Charles smiles wryly, “It wouldn’t be you that I would worry about; it’d be Ororo.”

“She loves Sean,” Alex says, and at the same time, three stories beneath them, Sean says aloud, “She loves me.” Ororo squeals as if to emphasize this and claps her hands.

Charles sighs.

Preemptively, he turns to Angel, who worries her bottom lip between her teeth, torn between wanting to speak and not wanting to overstep tentative lines she drew for herself when she returned to the mansion.

“Angel,” Charles prompts.

“Well,” she says, “If you want to go, it would help Alex and Raven I think. He – Erik – would listen to you the most, after all.”

“I don’t know if he wants to, is the thing,” Hank mutters.

“But,” Angel continues, “If you don’t want to,” she shrugs, “Well, you don’t have to.”

“It’s up to you, Charles,” Raven agrees.

“I have to go,” Alex says, “Go into town and pick up Hank’s things before the shop closes.”

“Do you want me to – ” Hank starts.

“Stop by the store and get more milk while you’re there,” Raven gets up and sits in Alex’s chair as the latter walks across the room.

“Tell me when you make up your mind, prof,” Alex says. He taps two fingers on his temple in imitation and then pulls those fingers out in a mock-salute as he exits the room.

Charles does not watch him go.

“The quicker we decide, the quicker we can move,” Raven says. She crosses her legs so that they won’t jiggle with nervous energy.

“I’m going down to the labs,” Hank says, when Charles makes no indication of acknowledgement. “Call me if you need me.” Hank disappears before another heated discussion can break out, following Alex out of the door but not down to the garage.

In his hand, Charles turns the coin over and over.

“I should go,” Raven says uncomfortably. She doesn’t like the way Charles loses himself like this sometimes, completely lost in a world unknown to her, unknown to the rest of the world. She rises and leaves as well. Another time, she might’ve stayed and curled up next to him in silent companionship, but her breath comes quick and her heart stirs with the beginnings of excitement; she wants to leave and find Erik.

In her wake, Angel speaks from where she sits across from Charles.

“You’re angry,” she says.

Charles crosses his legs, knees knocking into the bottom of his mahogany desk.

“And you’re hurt.” Angel wrings her hands. “I understand that.”

“Do you?” Charles asks, without scorn or ridicule. For some reason, he doesn’t consider Angel his student; there was no time between them when Charles taught her, no time he tried to pull an air of authority around himself, and because of this, she feels more prone to speaking her mind as she sees fit, not unlike the way Raven sometimes addresses him.

“He still cares for you.”

“If he cared, he would’ve stayed. But what would you – ” Charles clamps down on the rest of his sentence as well as the sudden flare of anger in his throat.

Angel says suddenly, “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Do you think I left because I didn’t care?”

“No,” Charles says automatically, “But it’s not like that – ”

“Just because I don’t believe in the same things you do, doesn’t mean I can’t care for you.”

“Is that why you came back?”

“I came back because I cared. And I – I was wrong. I know that now.”

“You weren’t wrong,” Charles muses, “You just saw the world differently.”

“I left,” Angel insists, “And it was hard. But it was harder to come back. It was hard to stay, Charles, and I – if Erik wasn’t shot, then I wouldn’t – I probably wouldn’t have stayed.”

“You’re not him, Angel. He’s not like you.”

Angel groans with frustration. “But either way, Alex is right. Erik wouldn’t send something like this if it weren’t important.”

A while passes before Charles speaks again. “For a long while, I thought things were right.” Charles turns the silver coin over with his thumb and forefinger. “I knew – from the beginning – I knew that we weren’t the same. But I thought we could overcome those differences.” Charles shakes his head.

There’s a sudden jolt of shock and Charles is momentarily distracted as he reaches out, only to find that Ororo has brought rain down on Raven. He withdraws from Raven’s mind.

Angel asks, “That night – when we met, were – ”

“No,” Charles says. “It’s not like that.” Charles exhales. “It was never like that.”

Then, “Sometimes,” Charles says, “I think I should’ve tried harder.”

“Tried what?”

“Tried to help him. Tried to bring him peace. But he’s still angry.”

“At you?”

Charles shrugs.

Angel slides her palm across her thigh. She isn’t sure of what to say. Eventually, she settles on saying, “You did what you could.”

“Not enough. But he left,” Charles repeats, “We met, we talked, he left. That’s it.”

“I left. I’m still here. Or are you going to kick me out?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“If you go to Nicaragua,” Angel says slowly, “You don’t have to go for him. You can go for the school, or go to – to protect us.” She glances at the folder that remains on Charles’ desk.

“Even if I go to – to _protect_ the school,” Charles bites out the word. “I don’t think it’ll stay that way. There’s something about him that – ” Charles breaks off.

“I know what you mean,” she says.

“I don’t think I could ever stop trying.”

“Trying to help him?”

“Trying to keep him,” Charles exhales.

“You want to see him again.”

“And I don’t know why,” Charles agrees.

“You sure about that?”

“We’re not here to talk about that.”

“You haven’t talked to me since I came back.”

Charles asks, “What was there to say?”

“Why won’t you go?” Angel says. “What are you afraid of?”

Silence fills the study.

“I know what it feels like to leave, Charles. And I know what it feels like to come back. I – I know I don’t know everything, but I know what it feels like to want to come back,” she says. “He sent you that,” she points to the coin turning in Charles’ palm. “He can take on whatever is out there – ”

“Unless he can’t – ”

“ – he sent you the coin.” She sighs and then rises. “You do what you want.”

Silence again. Charles reclines in his seat and thinks of a simpler time.

A jolt of pain shocks him from his reverie.

 _Hank?_ Charles sends out telepathically. As he thinks, Charles rises from his comfortable seat and heads down into the basement, down to where Hank keeps Cerebro.

 _Fine_ , answers Hank, but Charles is already halfway down the stairs.

The basement doors open with an easy swish.

“Alright, Hank? I felt – ”

“Wiring,” grumbles Hank. He untangles a wire from his forearm with a claw. “The metals I have now – they’re too delicate to be worked with in the way I want them to be.”

Charles licks his lips in thought. “Alex’s going into town; do you think – ”

“No, it’s not like that.” Hank looks down at his paws. “With the limited space and limited power we have right now, I have to cut down on the range of Cerebro, and also the size. At the CIA compound, I could use wires – thick ones that ran from the ceiling to the floor – but here, I don’t want to overload the new machinery.” Hank pushes his glasses up, “We have to use these really delicate wires but I can’t – ” He huffs in frustration. “Sorry, professor, I just – ”

“Is there any way we can purchase a new generator?” Charles frowns. “To increase power at the mansion? I’m sure – ”

“Even if we do, which I’m not saying in any way that we should, professor, you’ve done enough already, but even if we do, it’ll take at least a month to ship in – we’d have to order a custom one – ”

“Fine, fine,” Charles says. “But,” he frowns, not knowing how to help his student, “I’ll put an order in right away. If you could let me know which one – ”

“Yeah,” Hank nods; he turns to his machinery and tugs at a rubber cord. “I’ll let you know.”

“And,” Charles adds, “You know my resources are your resources. If there’s anything you need – ”

“I’ve got a lot, here,” Hank says.

Charles feels a twinge that is not his own.

“What is it, Hank?”

“Well,” Hank taps a glass meter idly.

“Go on.”

“If you do end up going to Nicaragua, if you – if you find Erik, and if he ends up coming back to the mansion, do you think you could ask him to stop by the labs? I have something that needs his powers.”

“If he ends up – ”

“It’s a lot to ask,” Hank backtracks quickly, “Never mind, I just – ”

“No, I could ask,” Charles says, his heart suddenly thumping erratically in his chest, “I just – I don’t think he’d be coming back. To the mansion, that is.”

Hank swallows. “Right.”

“But I’ll remember what you said,” Charles says, albeit slightly faintly.

“Thanks, professor.”


	4. Four

Silverware clatters against porcelain, filling the space of a kitchen with noise as a kitchen boy drops dirtied dishes into a sudsy sink. A chef with tired eyes scrapes the last bits of food off of a plate into a waiting trash can. The leftover waste falls into the bin, piling at the bottom like detritus on a forest floor. The sound of scraps of potato peel falling wetly on egg shells, crusts of bread, and fish bone squelches in the air unappealingly. It is December 4th, 1963.

The kitchen boy shouts something unintelligible through the din of the other workers in the kitchen. Together they finish cleaning away the remnants of the hotel’s dinner.

In the same hotel, two floors above them, three men sit in the hotel’s largest dining room, their hands curled around steaming cups of coffee and stems of sweaty wine glasses.

One man sits at the head of the table, his rotund belly pushing into the wooden edge of the table. His wire glasses cling onto the end of his nose. The man dips a white pinky into his coffee and stirs. A second man takes the seat to the immediate right; his fingers have snagged a wine glass and he swirls his drink pretentiously. The third man sits two seats down from the second, his dark eyes intent.

“I’ve made my proposition,” the second man says, “It would be a promising – ”

“Not to be rude,” the first man interrupts rudely, “But I didn’t come here for this.”

“We know what you came for,” the second man mutters to himself.

“What was that?” the first man, the white man, asks.

“Gentlemen,” the third man says, his words thick with accent. “I think the decision lies with me – ”

“Now,” says the first man, “Don’t – ”

“ – would be in everyone’s interest to contribute to Mr. Palacios’ funding – ”

“Is what you told the others as well?” demands the first man. He points at his two companions, one after another, “Are you two working together now? To get money from me?”

“Mr. Owens,” says the second man, Mr. Palacios. “I am not here to steal your money.”

“I already give enough money to Moreno,” Owens directs towards Palacios, “I didn’t come here to give you some as well.”

“It would be in – ”

“Everyone’s interests, uh-huh.” The man leans back in his chair to survey the room. “Alright, fine then – ”

The door to the conference room opens and a woman in a crisp, white uniform walks in, carrying a jug of hot coffee in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. She moves quickly, heading towards the third man, who sits closest to the door, moving to refill his wine, but he interrupts her, speaking lowly in Spanish, “We’re done here, thank you. No more.” He holds up a hand to stop her from pouring more wine.

“ _Sí, sí_ ,” she murmurs, and then leaves the room, taking the stairs down to the kitchen.

“They’re done,” she calls out in rapid Spanish, “Finished, no more. Can I go?”

“In a rush, aren’t you,” grumbles the chef. “Going home to that white boy of yours?”

“Can I go?” she repeats.

“Fine,” says the chef, waving the woman away with a knife in hand. “Go, now, before I make you stay.”

The woman breaks into a grin. “See you tomorrow.”

At the same time, a few miles away, Erik Lehnsherr has finished his dinner. He scrapes his plate clean with a finger and rises from his seat at his rickety table. He heads out of his home, and climbs onto his motorcycle. He gets onto the road and drives towards the city.

And at the same time, three thousand feet in the air above them, a dark jet streaks across the sky.

“Raven, are you sure – ”

“Fine,” she says, tightening her hands on the controls. “Now shut up.”

“Maybe – ”

“Leave it,” Charles says to Alex.

“It’s not too late to turn around,” Alex replies, only half-joking.

“It took me a week to decide,” Charles grits his teeth as the jet jerks, “Don’t make me change my mind now.”

Raven steers the jet through the air, her yellow eyes narrowing as she concentrates.

“Easy,” Charles can’t stop himself from saying.

“I got it,” Raven says roughly.

“Right there,” Alex says, “Yeah, that field – ”

The dark jet dips down none too gently, its nose tilting downwards, air rushing upwards to meet it, dropping down through the warm air.

“Slowly,” Charles says.

“ _I got it_.”

The jet plunges down, its dark silhouette framed by the pale sky, heading towards the abandoned field. It hovers for a moment above the field, gliding forward smoothly, before dipping several feet down, wheels all but smashing into the ground.

“Christ, Raven!” bellows Charles. His seatbelt is pulled taut as he’s jerked forward roughly.

The three of them inside the jet are jostled roughly as the jet lands – if it can be called that – on the rough terrain, wheels skidding across grass and dirt.

When Raven yanks on a handle, the jet slows, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust.

“Well,” Alex grimaces, “You did a better job than either of us could.”

“Not bad,” Raven tells herself.

“Let’s go,” Charles says. “We’ll have to walk for a while, so we’ll have to leave the bags here. We can pick them up later.”

The three of them exit the jet hastily, just as the sun begins to set. Alex looks back at the jet with a frown. “Erik can fix this, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Raven says airily. “Let’s go.”

A few minutes into their walk, Charles abandons his cardigan, peeling it off and wrapping it around his arm, wiping it across his forehead. Raven shifts into her blue form – there’s no one around for miles to see – and walks steadily across the clumps of grass. Alex looks around warily as they go, his eyes darting over bushes and trees, flies and stray dogs.

Alex has committed the map to memory and he leads the way; there’s only one road, however, so they walk alongside it for a while. Maybe, in a few decades, the machines will come and pave a cement road that leads to the city of León, but for now, their shoes scuffing against dirt and their shadows stretching longer and longer with every minute that the sun slips below the horizon.

“Is that – ” Raven asks as they near a cluster of homes on the horizon.

“Yeah,” pants Alex. He wipes his forehead and his sleeve comes away damp.

After a grueling walk through the undeveloped countryside, the three of them reach a line houses that sag under the weight of the horizon.

Alex slows.

The closest house to them is made of brick walls, with white stucco and paint coated right over the brick. A metal sheet slants over the house in a roof, which is shrouded in the shadow of a nearby tree. On the dirt to the side of the house, between the brick wall and the undeveloped landscape beyond, squats a boy. Save for him, the rest of the houses seem to be abandoned.

“Hi,” Alex says, walking up to the boy. Alex squats next to him in the dirt, not close enough to impose, but close enough for the boy to catch sight of him. “What’ve you got there?” Alex coaxes, continuing to speak in English even though the boy does not understand, and after a while, the boy cracks a smile and lifts his hand, twisting his wrist to reveal something heavy in his palm.

Charles stops in his tracks suddenly when he sees the metal horse in the boy’s palm, a sudden swell of bitterness rising in his chest.

Raven watches her brother; there’s a noticeable shift in Charles’ posture: his spine has gone rigid and there’s a clench in his jaw as Alex’s eyes catch on the metal figurine. Alex stands up abruptly and steps back.

“Go on,” Raven says softly, nudging Charles forward and Charles mindlessly steps forward, his legs trembling as he sinks to a squat in front of the boy, carefully not looking at the metal figurine. Instead, Charles meets the brown gaze of the boy.

“Hello,” he says, and he doesn’t dip into the boy’s mind – not even two telepathic fingers to test the warm emotions there – to translate; for some reason, he can’t bring himself to slip into a mind and allow himself the possibility of seeing Erik, even there.

Alex, who stands back near Raven a foot or two behind the crouching figures, looks up, towards the road. “Guys,” he warns when he hears the roar of a motorcycle.

Raven turns to face the same way Alex does, but Charles has frozen, his lips parted, eyes watching as the boy stands up abruptly as well, his face turning towards the road.

In his ribcage, Charles’ heart trembles, and his entire body suddenly pulses with energy, so thoroughly saturated in his limbs that he quakes; his white lips press together and his fingers fold into fists – this quiet anger suddenly freezes Charles.

Raven and Alex turn, heading around the corner of the house to walk up to the side of the road.

At the same time, Erik Lehnsherr drives up to his home. Thin arms are wrapped loosely around his chest, but even with the combined weight of himself and his passenger, Erik’s motorcycle drives smoothly.

Both Erik and his passenger, a woman dressed in a white uniform, slide off the bike with a practiced ease.

Erik catches sight of the figure standing in front of his home and turns to speak.

The woman in the white uniform beats him to it. “I’ll be at Fernán’s,” she says wisely, shouldering the basket on her waist, the hem of the skirt of her uniform swaying slightly as she walks around the house the other way, away from Erik and the waiting figure.

The waiting man, his clothes tattered and his round belly peeking out from under the worn hem of his shirt, a wrinkled, Nicaraguan man, walks up to Erik.

“Raven,” Erik dips his head, and the Nicaraguan man morphs into Raven.

Around the crumbling corner of the house, Alex steps, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Alex,” Erik says.

For a second, Raven opens her mouth to speak – whether it is to apologize or to forgive Erik will never know – but then, with a quiet sheathing noise, she shifts, her blonde hair darkening into red and her pale skin deepening into blue. The corners of Erik’s eyes, which were stony and unreadable up until this point, soften almost imperceptibly.

“I missed you,” Raven half-says, half-whispers, neither an apology nor words of forgiveness, just the first thought that comes to mind.

The length of Erik’s spine stiffens and he says, not very loudly, “We should go inside.”

To Alex, as Erik brushes past Raven, moving towards the front of the house, it seems as though the man has disregarded Raven’s words completely and callously. But as Erik walks by Raven, he brushes his thumb purposefully across the canvas of her wrist.

Alex looks at Erik and Erik looks at Alex when the taller man rounds the corner of the house. The air around them, sticky with humidity and heat, suddenly clenches, like a fist.

Erik comes to a complete stop when he sees the man crouching in the dirt.

“Charles,” Erik says, the briefest hint of surprise coloring his voice.

The other man says nothing, rising without a word to turn and meet Erik’s gaze.

“I – ” starts Erik and then he stops.

For a moment, neither of them speak. An undeniable tension tightens the air between them and they stare at one another without word.

It’s difficult to describe such a tension: it is a rift between two halves of a whole, a gaping chasm that runs through an island because no man is entirely only himself, and even though Erik Lehnsherr would be the prime candidate for someone who were, he and Charles Xavier share – or at least, they shared – something that no one but the two of them seem to understand. They are two sides of the same coin, inextricably bound, even though at times, they’d prefer not to be.

A series of emotions flits through Erik’s mind before he clamps down on them ruthlessly, pressing his lips together tightly.

If Charles is surprised by Erik’s lack of a helmet, he gives no outward indication of it.

“It’s good to see you,” Erik breaks the silence first, his voice dry and toneless.

Charles licks his lips in response and inhales like he’d like to speak. The only thing that gives his anger away is the white fist tucked into his pocket.

“Come inside,” Erik says. Then he glances away, toward the road and the miles and miles beyond. He looks back at Charles while Raven and Alex watch. “We shouldn’t talk out here,” emphasizes Erik. He looks again at the road, and the row of dilapidated houses a few yards beyond.

Their shadows stretch across the ground as the four of them make their way inside.

The kitchen rises out of darkness to greet them, the dull metal surfaces of a pot, a knife, and the roof gleaming with the last dregs of sunlight. Erik moves towards the brick stove while, after stepping into the kitchen, the others hang back and openly look around the kitchen.

Metal clatters against metal as Erik drops an aluminum pan onto the sheet of metal that serves as a stove. Before anyone has the chance to speak, a child’s laugh bubbles into the kitchen as Dante bounds inside, waving a half of a baguette.

The boy waves his bread in front of Erik, beckoning the man to look upon his treasure.

With ease, Erik sinks into a squat. “Did your sister bring that back for you?” Erik asks, his mouth forming the Spanish words smoothly.

Dante nods once. His eyes are wide.

“Dante,” calls a tight voice from outside, “Come now.”

“Go on,” Erik says to the boy.

Dante leaves and Erik rises smoothly. He gestures awkwardly to the rickety table with mismatched chairs; Alex and Raven sink into their seats eagerly after a long day.

Charles, however, stands. He walks over to the far wall and assumes a staple stance in academia: hands folded neatly behind his back, knees slightly bent, spine straight and stiff, and neck tilted slightly backwards to take in the entirety of the map Erik’s pinned up. His eyes trail over the metal bits and the loopy scribbles.

“What’s this about?” Alex asks then without preamble, reaching within his pocket to pull out a crumpled wad of papers. They land on the splintery table with a plop.

“After Cuba I came into contact with Azazel,” Erik says clinically. He’s still turned away from the table, pouring white dough into a pan that cracks with oil. “I tracked down Shaw’s accomplices to here.”

Raven frowns. “This is – this is related to him?”

“Not exactly. We knew Shaw was working with the Russians before – before, but he wasn’t in contact with them directly until the days leading up to the crisis.” Erik speaks as though he reads from a textbook. “He was working with an international business organization, a covert one, and he got his fundings from them. The firm isn’t involved with mutants at all.”

Erik turns around and three metal plates fly out from a hollow in the wall, floating like saucers across the room and landing on the table gently, in front of Raven, Alex, and an empty seat.

“Isn’t,” echoes Raven. “They’re still in operation today?”

“What do they do?” Alex asks importantly.

“Nothing,” Erik says roughly. He nudges a tortilla onto each plate before turning back to the stove. “The firm’s based here but all they do is steal money from the government.”

“Money laundering?” Alex frowns.

“And offshore accounts,” Erik agrees. “Anything you can think of. Here and Panama. There are countries all over the world hiding their money here. But we’re not here because of that. We’re here because one particular offshoot of this firm invested money in Shaw.”

“But Shaw’s dead,” Raven says, “So – ”

“They’re putting money somewhere else,” Alex guesses, “Another group or another person, someone like Shaw.”

“They invest in prospective sources. I got,” Erik nods at the wad of paper in front of Alex as he walks over and pours beans onto the three plates, “That from one of the men invested in the firm.”

The aluminum pan, still half full, floats to the stove and settles down on its own. Erik sinks into the seat next to Alex as the latter and Raven dig in quickly.

“What do they want from us?” Alex asks after swallowing a mouthful of beans.

“That’s why I’m here,” Erik says, “The people who put that together,” Erik jerks his head at the wad of paper, “Met with the Nicaraguan government and a representative of Switzerland today in a hotel, a few miles down the road you came in on.”

Raven asks, “You were there?”

“Jimena was there. The woman who lives here – she works at the hotel. It’s one of the nicer ones here, and it’s not far from the capital, so they often come to meet and negotiate for money there.”

“So,” Alex says thoughtfully, “You don’t know for sure – ”

“Not for sure,” Erik says, “But the man who was in the hotel today; he’s building up a profile for all mutants in the American continent – ”

“But not you,” Alex frowns.

“I’ve cleaned up after myself,” Erik says, looking at Alex evenly. “Anyway,” he continues, “they’re watching you. They’ve sent out agents to the United States already.” Erik rises and pulls a warm beer from one of the hollows in the wall, something he bought this morning at León, “They’re working with the CIA, so, whatever you believe about them, they’re not helping you.”

“That’s not,” Alex says. “That’s not a thing anymore.”

Erik exhales noiselessly as he sinks back into his seat. “For now – ”

A loud yawn interrupts his sentence. “Sorry,” she says automatically, when the men turn to look at her, her blue eyes watering after she yawns.

“You must be tired,” Erik says stiffly.

“It’s fine,” Raven says, and at the same time, Charles turns slightly to look at her. He furrows his eyebrows in surprise, slightly worried that he’d been so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice her exhaustion before.

“I’ll pull out the extra mattress in the storage room,” Erik says roughly, walking into the other room. Raven follows.

Raven’s eyes squint, adjusting as she enters the darker room, following Erik. Her gaze skips across the peeling walls and the mattress on the floor, pushed snug against the closest corner, across the cramped space cluttered with neat piles of clothes, odd buckets, pieces of twine and other useful things, to the small mattress leaning against the far wall. “That one?” she says.

“Yeah,” Erik nods, glancing back. His eyes meet Raven’s yellow ones. She’d shifted automatically to better see in the dark. Raven blinks quickly and then her eyes turn blue once more.

Together, the two of them push clothes and scrap metal and wood to the side of the room before peeling the mattress down from the wall and setting it against the far corner of the storage room on top of a metal frame that Erik haphazardly puts together – his hand waves and the scrap pieces of metal pull together quietly – in the seconds before the mattress is lowered.

“I didn’t think you would come,” Erik says lowly when the mattress plops onto its frame.

“You sent us the coordinates – ”

“I thought you were going to use Cerebro,” Erik says.

Raven reaches out and nudges a silver helmet, which is nestled between a neat pile of folded sheets and a burlap sack of plastic, with the tip of her shoe.

“Not possible. We – that is – well, Moira isn’t,” Raven hesitates, “She doesn’t remember.”

Erik narrows his eyes and slides his hands into his back pockets.

“So Hank had to rebuild Cerebro and it can’t extend this far yet – ”

“So you came here instead,” Erik finishes, not disapprovingly.

Silence fills the room for a moment.

“You could’ve told me,” Raven says quietly, all too aware of the fact that Charles stands in the next room over, their conversation blocked by the brick wall – but only just. “You could’ve told me that you were leaving.”

“What would you have done if I did?” Erik asks. A foot or two of space separates them but neither of them makes a move to close the space between them.

“Are you asking if I would’ve gone with you?”

“Would you?”

Raven hesitates. “Not then, no. Not at that moment.”

Erik shrugs, his shoulders rising and falling.

“But still,” she insists.

“I told no one I was leaving.”

“You told Azazel.”

“He brought me to Brazil.”

Silence again.

And then, Raven says, “He missed you.”

“He knew,” Erik turns away. Raven frowns.

In the next room over, Alex rises from his empty seat.

The two of them – Alex and Charles – look up at the map Erik’s marked.

“Was I right to come here?” Charles says, so softly.

“You wanted to,” Alex shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Charles turns to look at Alex. He wants to ask Alex how he can be so calm here, how he can keep his composure, but then the deliberate scuff of skin against dirt – Erik’s heel against the floor – alerts Charles to the other man’s presence.

“The mattress is out,” Erik directs to Alex, “There’s enough room in there for you, if you’re tired.”

Alex isn’t necessarily tired; he wants to stay and he wants to ask more questions, he wants to listen, but Charles’ body turns towards Erik in such a way that belies the dullness in Charles’ eyes in the weeks after Erik’s departure and Alex does not want to impose.

“Right,” he nods. “I should sleep, I’m – ” Alex pauses. “I should sleep.”

Neither of the other men protests. Alex goes.

“You’re not wearing the helmet,” Charles acknowledges, speaking directly to Erik for the first time in more than a year. Charles is still turned towards the map and his hands are fisted in his pockets. He struggles to keep his voice low.

Erik moves towards the rickety table in the center of the kitchen and collects the dirty plates by handing, before dropping them into the warm air, which is thick and sultry and catches the metal easily, placing the metal plates onto the ground next to the large vat of cold water in the corner of the room.

“Do I need to?”

Charles is quiet for a moment. Then, to the flat expanse of the Indian Ocean, Charles asks, “Would you really have done it?”

Glass scrapes along the wooden table. Erik cleans the rest of the table quickly, and tucks the empty beer bottle back into the hollowed shelf that Erik took it out of.

Charles elaborates, “Would you really have dropped those missiles onto the ships?”

“What would you have done if I had?” counters Erik without bitterness.

“Don’t,” Charles’ knuckles turn white and his spine tightens with anger. “Don’t do that.”

Erik sinks into a stool by the table. “Don’t do what, Charles?” Then he sighs. “You knew, when you came here, you knew what you were coming for.” Erik glances behind him at the wall that blocks the storage room from the kitchen. “And you knew what you were getting into.”

“And yet,” Charles gets out through gritted teeth. He turns around. “And yet, I still came here.”

“Why did you?” Erik fixes his gaze on Charles. “Why did you come, then?”

“You sent us the folder,” Charles paces forward and places two fists around the back of the chair that perches across from Erik. “I care,” he bites out. “I. _Care_.”

“And I don’t?” Erik asks, voice dangerously low. He rises out of his chair slowly and makes his way around the corner of the table.

Charles turns to continue facing Erik, his back to the table. Charles spits out, “You left us – ”

“I left to _protect_ us.”

“ – you abandoned us, Erik, you abandoned _me_.”

Erik steps forward suddenly and Charles steps back reflexively, his back bumping into the lip of the table behind him. The room shrinks around them as Erik suddenly swells with anger; all of the metal in the room trembles slightly.

“Tell me,” Erik says, his voice rumbling in his chest; his eyes catch on the bulge of Charles’ Adam’s apple as the younger man swallows thickly. “Tell me, Charles, what was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t – ”

“What was I supposed to do?” Erik demands, surging forward and he’s close enough for their shadows to merge into one now.

“You were supposed to _stay_ ,” Charles snarls.

“At the mansion? Wasting away while there are people – while there are organizations like those,” he gestures towards the map across the room, “Out there?”

“I wanted you to stay,” Charles says, his voice trembling with some unidentifiable emotion, his eyes bright.

“Maybe you should have fought harder.” Erik’s fists clench and the veins on his forearms are fat underneath his skin.

And neither of them are aware of it in that moment, but the two men – two of the most powerful mutants in the world – stand impossibly close: Erik’s toes brush the inside of Charles’ shoes, Charles’ hips slant upwards, Erik’s spine curls downward to frame the space between their bodies.

“You knew – that night – you knew I was going to leave – ”

“I didn’t know!” interrupts Charles hotly, “How was I supposed – ”

“You know everything, don’t you?” Erik says with the barest hint of mockery, “You even said so – ”

“ – that you were going to leave, I didn’t – ”

“ – knew everything about me!”

“I – what?” Charles frowns.

“You said you knew everything about me, that night I tried to leave the CIA – ”

“And you,” Charles starts, but his mouth refuses to form the rest of the words; he blinks dumbly in shock.

“I thought you knew I was going to leave,” Erik says.

“I wouldn’t,” Charles says vehemently, “I would never, Erik, I told you, I wouldn’t – ”

“Max?”

A round face peers around the main door of the house that leads into the kitchen; Dante’s eyes are as round as always as he speaks.

Erik steps back suddenly, putting space between himself and Charles.

“Are we interrupting,” Jimena asks softly in Spanish to Erik as she steps into the kitchen, “I can take Dante back and we can stay the night at – ”

“Dinner’s on the stove.” Erik nods towards the aluminum pan, answering in Spanish as well.

“We can – ”

“Jimena,” Erik turns to look at her, “It’s fine.”

She blinks and then ambles over to the stove, Dante in her wake, grabbing the aluminum pan. She glances at Charles curiously before disappearing around a brick wall into her room.

Before Dante follows, the boy goes and dumps a bucket of water into the tin tub in the corner of the kitchen.

And Charles straightens up, just realizing that he’d slouched against the wooden table. He clears his throat and straightens his legs; the muscles in his legs tremble slightly in the same way a colt’s limbs tremble when it walks for the first time.

“Come on,” Erik directs to Charles, in English. All traces of anger from his voice have drained.

Charles follows Erik outside. The sun has all but disappeared beneath the horizon and Erik picks up a kerosene lamp that leans against the side of the house. Erik lights the lamp quickly and Charles blinks at the bright light.

They make their way back inside. Erik hands the lamp to Charles as Erik grabs a cloth from a space in the wall. Charles places the lamp carefully onto the table As soon as he’s done so, Erik tosses the cloth to Charles.

“Wash up,” Erik nods towards the vat of water in the corner of the kitchen. “I’m going to get sheets.”

“Right,” Charles says. His voice does not tremble.

“We’ll have to drape them on the floor. There’s no other room,” Erik says tightly. Erik does not look at the other man.

“Right,” Charles says again. He suddenly wishes it weren’t so hot; he wants to wear his cardigan.

Erik disappears into the storage room, walking into the room without pause. There is no door, just a space where a door should be. The walls of the room, just like the walls of the house, are brick and stucco.

When he leaves, Charles heads towards the tub of water, dipping the cloth into cold water before wiping it over his face, his neck, and his hands.

A time ago, perhaps a year or more, the two men would’ve conversed easily, bantering back and forth; and at that time, even if there were a long silence, it would have been a comfortable one. It would have been an easy silence, like the quiet calmness of the world before dawn, or the space between breaths; it would’ve been an unhurried silence, a silence that simply existed, just like how the things of the world just _are_.

But now, here, tension coils thick between them, as Erik moves to grab afghans from a corner of the room where Alex already snores. Maybe this is the way things are, for now: two men entirely unto themselves.

Erik makes his way back into the kitchen, carrying a pile of woven blankets. In the area of flooring between the rickety table and the world map on the far side of the wall, Erik drops them. They straighten out without prompting, flattening onto the floor.

“Metal,” Erik answers Charles’ questioning gaze. “In the edges.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll sleep here,” Erik says. “It’s not much – ”

“It’s fine,” Charles says, biting his lip to keep from adding more.

“Not like Westchester,” Erik mutters quietly, but Charles doesn’t know if the other man means for him to hear, so Charles says nothing.

And it should be more awkward than this, with the gap between them, a chasm as wide as the girth of three hundred and sixty-five days, but the two men are tired, thoroughly worn out from their respective days, arguments, lives.

And they’ve been here before. They’ve shared hotel rooms and chess boards; they’ve been in places more dangerous and more unstable; they’ve come too far to let things like words and time come between them.

So Charles folds his knees and arranges his limbs on the hand-woven blanket, folding his fingers into the holes of the material around him; and Erik runs a hand over his worn face, before turning and sitting himself onto his blanket, placing his feet on the naked floor.

In the stove, the last embers breathe in oxygen slowly, spluttering out red flecks of light. The kerosene lamp flickers. The afghan next to Charles rasps against the ground as Erik finally settles in.

For a moment, nothing fills the room save for the rise and fall of their breaths and the quiet hiss of the last embers in the stove.

Then Charles swallows back his anger and closes his eyes. “Good night, Erik,” he says quietly.

“Good night, Charles,” Erik replies eventually, his voice stiff.

And they fall asleep, too tired to bother changing their clothes, listening to the sounds of each other’s breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A photo of León: [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Street_in_Le%C3%B3n%2C_Nicaragua_5.jpg).


	5. Five

The sky yawns, long and slow, its warm breath billowing out as it exhales gently. Over the dirt roads and sugar plantations, calabash trees and the sun-tanned hides of cattle, the humid air rushes, rustling leaves and hair and fur alike, shaking Nicaragua from the clutches of night. It is December 5th, 1963.

Somewhere in the department of León in Nicaragua, in between the cities of León and Corinto, in a small cluster of dilapidated houses situated a few yards away from a dirt road, in the sagging home at the very end of a line of houses, a man lying on top of a worn afghan stirs.

Through a window in a wall of the kitchen, which is a square space in the stucco and paint and brick, left unfilled by a glass pane or any kind of material of that sort, the sun blinks sleepily and shines thin rays of light across dirt floors and weave blankets. Erik Lehnsherr blinks sleepily as well, his eyes adjusting to the light as sunlight creeps into the kitchen. He rises, and his blanket rasps against his thin cotton shirt, against his pants.

He rightens and heads towards the tub of water that sits in the corner of the room. After washing up quietly, he walks outside to hang his worn cloth on a line that runs from the corner of his house to a high branch of a tree a yard or two away.

Erik heads back inside after that, and by now, the sunlight has illuminated most of the kitchen, enough for him to shuffle over to the brick stove, start a fire underneath the metal sheet, and place an aluminum pan onto the rapidly heating surface.

In the next room over, through a thin wall of one row of brick and stucco, Jimena awakens. She untangles her limbs from Dante, and rises as well, barely blinking at the sun before walking out of her room and into the kitchen.

She greets Erik with a low murmur, skirting around the sleeping form of Charles and plucking a jícaro cup full of salt from next to the brick stove. With an exaggerated flourish, she pinches salt out of the cup and throws it into the pan. Oil cracks merrily as the eggs cook.

“ _Gracias_ ,” Erik murmurs, although he raises an eyebrow. Continuing in Spanish, he asks quietly, “Why the good mood today?”

“Why not?” Jimena smiles serenely at the eggs. The oil pops loudly in response.

“How was Fernán?” Erik asks, as she moves to grab the second aluminum pan.

“Delighted with the bread,” Jimena answers, and she nudges Erik over slightly, placing the second aluminum pan onto the makeshift stovetop next to the sizzling pan of eggs. “It was nice bread, you know, with the corn and the seeds.”

Erik hums in agreement as Jimena starts to make tortillas.

From the doorway, someone yawns.

Dante shuffles into the kitchen, his bare feet dragging across dirt. The boy heads straight for the vat of water, hopping neatly over Charles’ legs to grab a cup and scoop out cold water.

“Take out all our plates,” Jimena directs to her brother. “All the ones we have.”

The boy gulps down water before placing the cup on the table, and then taking a stack of four plates out from the missing bricks on the other side of the kitchen.

“Charles and I will eat afterwards,” Erik reassures Jimena, who bites her lip at the thought of not having enough plates for the entire household.

She opens her mouth to protest but Erik beats her to it. “You’ll be late for work,” he insists.

The cheap tin material of the metal plates clinks gently against the unvarnished surface of soft wood as Dante sets the table quickly.

“I’ll wake the other two,” Erik nods his head in the direction of the storage room, and Jimena nods in agreement.

Erik walks into the storage room with complete silence.

Even through the dimness, Erik can see the sleeping shapes of Raven and Alex, each one on their respective mattresses in their respective corners of the storage room. Erik makes his way to Raven first, who sleeps closest to the kitchen.

Without a sound, Erik kneels on the mattress, his knees on the lip of the mattress, and reaches out with one hand, meaning to place it on her shoulder.

“’m awake,” Raven murmurs, turning over with a rasp of fabric. Her yellow eyes blink open blearily and Erik looks at her.

For a long while, they look at one another. And then Raven turns over again, mumbling sleepily about five more minutes.

Erik rises and makes his way back into the kitchen.

“Not now,” he says under his breath so as not to wake the man who sleeps peacefully on the floor.

Jimena and Dante eat quickly – not that they have much to eat anyway – half of a tortilla and a slice of ham each, with one egg to share, yellow yolk coating everything on their metal plates like viscous paint.

“Done?” Erik asks, a few minutes later.

Jimena nods, although she adds, “I can get a ride from Fernán today.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she nods.

Erik nods as well, waving to her when she walks out the door.

Dante is quick to follow her, although he will spend most of the day alternating between hanging up clothes on the clothesline, assisting in the automobile shop, and running along the dirt road, chasing after dogs.

The two have left only for a few minutes – those few minutes Erik spends sitting at the table, drinking water slowly and willing himself not to lose his temper like he did the previous night – before Charles awakens with a quiet breath.

Erik remembers seeing Charles like this before, still soft and compliant with the last strains of sleep, from a time long past, from a time when they could still speak without anger rising underneath their skin.

But now, today, Erik turns away. He is no longer entitled to such things.

Charles wakes in increments and while Erik no longer looks, he listens. Erik listens to the way Charles’ breathing changes, from shallow and slow to quick and ragged, his clothes whispering against the woven blanket and the dirt underneath him as he sits up slowly. He listens for the press of the soles of feet against hard dirt, for the quick, quiet footfalls of Charles making his way over to the vat of water in the corner of the kitchen; he listens to the quiet purl of water and the way five fingers create ribbons of disturbance on the still surface of the water.

Charles runs a wet hand over his face, washing away the remnants of sleep. He’d slept more fitfully than he thought he would’ve. He wants to ask for coffee but does not know if Erik has any, so he settles for taking a sip of the lukewarm water from the cup of his palm.

Erik sets up the table without a word and Charles sinks into a wooden chair gratefully. Even though he had a fitful sleep last night, he’s still sore from exhaustion.

Metal clinks against splintering wood; Erik places an egg and a tortilla on Charles’ plate.

“We left our things on the jet,” Charles says, after devouring half of his breakfast. He reaches out and takes a sip of water from Erik’s cup without thinking about it.

As Erik sits, he carefully maneuvers his arms so he won’t brush against Charles’ elbow. They eat in silence.

Charles chews a mouthful of egg and reaches for the brown cup again, taking a long sip before asking, “What is this made of?” He twists the cup in the sunlight, examining it from the sides and top.

“Jícaro,” Erik says.

“Bless you.”

“It’s kind of a fruit,” Erik explains, “Looks a bit like a gourd. Horses eat the inside – the pulp and the seed – or the seeds are used to make a kind of _horchata_. Then the shell is dried and carved.” Erik reaches over and knocks a knuckle against the wood-like cup. “Use them for plates and cups and things like that.”

“Horchata?”

“It’s a kind of drink.”

Charles makes an interested noise and Erik wonders if Charles is reading his mind.

“Where is it?” Erik asks a few minutes later.

“Is what?” Charles doesn’t look at Erik.

“The jet,” Erik asks, “Where did you land it? Unless, Hank flew it back.”

“No, Hank’s still at the mansion with Sean, watching – ” Charles breaks off; Erik does not know who Ororo is. “It’s parked a few miles away.”

“You walked here?”

“Yes,” Charles says, and he tries not to speak coldly.

“I’ll drive you there,” Erik offers, “We’ll pick up your things.”

Charles breathes shallowly. “And Raven and Alex?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“We’ll write them a note,” Charles corrects.

“Fine,” Erik says, and then they are quiet once more.

The air between them remains raw and tense like a bruise, blood collected close to the skin, sensitive and tender.

It seems strange for the two of them to be eating breakfast together. Watching someone wake is an intimate thing, and sharing a meal even more so; they’ve been here before, but not quite, not when both of their nerves are raw from their argument last night, when they still remember the events of Cuba and the days afterwards with clarity.

“Are you ready to go?” Erik asks when he sees Charles finish the last of his tortilla.

Charles nods. “Are you?”

“I’ll get the helmets.”

Erik disappears into the storage room and Charles scribbles out a note for the two sleeping bodies.

In the other room, Erik navigates the stacks of plastic crates, the same ones used to hold oranges and the like, and piles of clothes; he grabs a helmet from atop a wooden crate and heads back out into the kitchen, leaving the sleeping forms of Raven and Alex behind him.

“Ready?” Charles looks up when Erik purposefully scuffs his foot along the floor.

“Bike’s outside,” Erik says, not looking at Charles.

The two of them head out without another exchange, stepping completely into the not entirely comfortable sun and the entirely uncomfortable humidity. Under the shade of a nearby calabash tree, Erik climbs onto his waiting motorcycle.

“I – ” Charles starts, then thinks better of it.

“On,” Erik says. He hands Charles a helmet.

“None for you?”

“Do I need it?”

“Do I?”

Erik shrugs and starts the engine. “If you don’t want it, leave it.”

Charles purses his lips, then swings a leg over the body of the bike. As they speed away, the dust settles over the helmet left in the shade of a nearby tree.

Charles directs Erik towards the jet; it’s too loud for them to talk, what with the sound of the wind and the sound of the engine, so Charles settles for gesturing to the right or left when needed.

It’s distinctly uncomfortable, for Charles at least. Erik simply grips the handlebars and drives, while Charles struggles with this sudden proximity to Erik; eventually, Charles settles for loosely wrapping his arms around somewhere between Erik’s chest and his hips, and tries not to think too much about it.

They reach the jet, or its half-crumpled remains, easily. The main body of the jet is intact; only the wheels and underbelly are damaged. Erik huffs when he sees this.

There’s rubble surrounding the jet, upturned grass and dirt, but there are no other people around for miles.

“Lovely,” Charles mutters, as the engine dies and as the two of them get off of the motorcycle.

“Could be worse,” answers Erik.

“Easy for you to say,” Charles replies without any heat or feeling behind it. The two of them walk towards the wreckage.

Charles walks first, and he tells himself he isn’t trying to prove anything.

When he reaches the side door of the jet, he wrenches two fingers into the gap between the crumpled metal of the door and the crumpled metal of the plane’s body. With a grunt, Charles tugs. The door remains unmoving.

Dry grass rustles as Erik steps forward.

“Don’t,” Charles warns, “I can do it.”

“We’ll be here the whole day,” Erik replies, and he steps up next to Charles. The door pushes inwards under his touch easily.

Charles grudgingly follows Erik into the body of the plane.

Around them, sunlight filters into the metal skeleton of the plane. Charles thinks of Cuba for a fleeting second, black and gray whales beached upon the sand; he wonders if he is Jonah now, in the belly of the beast. The shadows are shaped strangely here; dust floats freely in the air and blurs all sharp edges into dull lines.

Charles steps carefully behind Erik. “The bags ought to be in the back,” Charles remembers aloud. “I’ve a metal razor in mine.”

The entire body of the plane is inclined: the tip of the plane points downwards while the tail slopes upwards, an obvious indication of the crash landing. As a result, Charles has to shuffle up the main strip of the plane, lest his grip fails and he slides down the plane.

For a moment, he concentrates so much on his step that he doesn’t notice Erik’s stopped in front of him.

“Christ, Erik,” Charles bites out when he stops before his nose brushes against Erik’s back.

“Don’t move,” Erik says.

“Why?”

Erik, predictably, does not answer. The man moves a little to the left, heading towards an emergency kit nestled underneath a seat; the metal scalpel within sings sweetly to Erik. It would be useful to have more gauze and alcohol pads. And, after emptying the contents of the box, Erik could use the metal container itself – there’s no surplus of metal in Jimena’s home, at least to Erik, that is.

Charles, predictably, moves forward. He navigates around a pile of G-suits, attempting to make his way to the front of the plane, when the jet’s metal frame creaks, convulsing once before stilling. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cause Charles to stumble.

Luckily, Erik lunges forward, hand wrapping around Charles’ thin arm, tightening like a vice. At Erik’s insistence, the metal skeleton of the jet stills.

“I told you not to move,” Erik says quietly. That Charles can feel the warmth of Erik’s breath on his cheeks is an indication of the distance – or lack thereof – between them.

“Erik,” Charles says, and it isn’t quite a warning, but it isn’t quite an invitation either. Charles waits for another touch, but another one never comes.

“Did you really think I would let the missiles fall?” Erik asks, his voice uneven.

“I didn’t – I don’t know,” Charles blinks. He looks down at where Erik’s tired fingers wrap around his arm; Erik’s skin is dark and warm in comparison to Charles’.

“I wouldn’t have,” Erik answers his own question. “I might’ve killed Shaw, but I wouldn’t have killed all of those men.”

Charles’ gaze snaps up. His jaw clenches. “Don’t think you can just – ”

“I wouldn’t have,” Erik repeats, “But I had to know.”

“ – change the subject like that.”

“Change the subject,” Erik narrows his eyes, “We weren’t talking about anything before.”

“You – I thought you were going to – ”

“Going to what,” Erik asks, and it comes out as a sneer.

“Nothing,” Charles snaps.

Erik’s fingers tighten almost imperceptibly. Neither man has moved away; their bodies are dark shadows against the rubble and the dust and the blurry sunlight.

“I had to know,” Erik repeats.

“Are you trying to justify your actions?”

“You were in my _head_ – ”

“I wasn’t in your head,” hisses Charles, “I never was, except for the very first time we met.”

“Fine, but I had to know. I had to know you weren’t.”

And the bones of Charles’ ribcage tremble; his entire body shudders and his lips part. “ _Erik_.”

Erik jerks his head away from Charles’ round gaze. One by one, his fingers peel off of Charles’ skin.

“Come on,” Erik says roughly, “Let’s get the rest of your things.”

Charles watches the man move away for a moment, watching him maneuver through the dust and metal and heat with ease, before following him into the dark belly of the jet.

Silence fills the remnants of the jet after that, the two of the men lost in their own thoughts. Erik sorts through the rubble mechanically, occasionally using his powers to lift steel or wing and extract something from beneath. On the other hand, Charles doesn’t seem as concentrated on his task, his fingers brushing against the leather of a seat or the strap of a seatbelt, as if the only thing he wanted were to feel.

But they end up extracting three bags from the rubble, as well as the first aid kit, a few leafs of paper money, and a bottle of whiskey. Erik plucks the latter out from under the pilot’s seat and raises an eyebrow at Charles. Charles turns away stiffly.

One of the bags, strapped across Charles’ chest now, is stuffed full of Raven’s things. Alex and Charles’ things, in their respective bags, are shouldered by Erik as the two men make their way back to the motorcycle. Charles had tried to protest and carry a second duffel bag but the other man refused.

They climb onto the bike, which shudders with the weight of the two of them and the bags combined, but it starts with a gentle purr regardless.

The ride back is quiet; Charles occupies himself by trying to scoot back in his seat, in an attempt to put some space between his body and Erik’s lower back, before giving up and finally placing his hands hesitantly on either side of Erik’s waist.

At the same time, in a house, a few miles down the road, Raven wakes.

She rises fitfully, slipping out of sleep and into consciousness without more than a single blink. She stands up, stretches, and then goes into the kitchen, running her thumb over a paper note that flutters invitingly on the table. Her gaze darts over the pile of blankets that remain rumpled on the floor; they look like used tissues.  Not for the first time since her arrival in Nicaragua, Raven thinks of that night, more than a year ago, when Erik had left.

She’s still deep in thought when a motorcycle rumbles outside, the sound wafting in through the open window.

Erik and Charles make their way inside, lugging the heavy bags.

“You went to the jet,” Raven observes, blue eyes tracking Erik and Charles as the two men disappear into the storage room to drop the bags in a corner not as cluttered as the rest. Alex snores on, oblivious to the world around him.

Erik wipes his hands on his jeans – Charles realizes now where all of the stains come from – and they walk back into the kitchen.

“Are you hungry?” Erik directs at Raven.

She smiles at him and Charles clears his throat. “I’m going to wake up Alex,” he says in explanation as walks back into the storage room.

Charles’ figure disappears and Raven moves to stand by Erik at the stove.

“So,” she says lowly, and he shifts the pan slightly with his powers as he opens the large burlap sack next to him. Oil spreads across the surface of the aluminum pan.

“So,” Erik echoes and Raven sighs.

“Look,” she says bluntly, “I don’t know what you two – ”

What time is it,” Alex yawns as he steps into the kitchen.

And Erik steps neatly away, bringing the aluminum pan with him. He slides ham and a tortilla onto a plate in front of Alex as the younger boy slides into the seat at the head of the table.

“Almost lunch time,” Erik says, handing a plate to Raven. Alex stares down at his eggs in surprise.

“Already?” asks Alex.

“Eat quickly,” Erik rumbles, “We’re going into the city.”

“We’re?” Raven frowns.

“I’ve got another bike in Fernán’s garage,” Erik says. And then to Alex, he asks, “Do you still remember – ”

“Yeah.”

Charles, outwardly oblivious to the stilted conversation behind him, runs a hand over the map that’s been pinned up on the side of the wall. He brushes a fingertip over the trail leading from the Yucatan Peninsula to Honduras, from Honduras to Nicaragua.

“Where’s Dante?” Charles asks suddenly

“Probably in the fields. Either that or he’s helping with the vendors.”

Charles begins to form a question, “The vendors?” but Erik offers only a curt, “We leave soon,” before tossing a towel carelessly onto the table and heading towards the door.

Charles bites down on his tongue and, as the other man moves to leave, sinks into the seat next to Raven.

Wood scrapes against dirt, sending up a cloud of dust as Alex stands up abruptly, following Erik of the house, stepping into the sun and dirt.

Ahead of him, the cluster of homes have already awaken; women are carrying carts of fruits out to pick-up trucks – to sell in vendors, Alex surmises – piles of watermelon and avocado.

All around the dirt clearing are haphazardly constructed homes. Clotheslines run from one house to the next, tied to everything from trees to roofs to poles of metal in the dirt. Clothes hang from them, pieces of fabric – once colorful but now worn down to a faded gray – swinging slightly in the breeze like papel picado. Through the gaps between the houses and under low hanging branches of trees, children dart.

A few heads turn to watch the foreigner who follows Erik into a small home on the other side of the dirt clearing, the house closest to a rusty faucet that supplies the vicinity with water. The fourth wall of the home is made of the same material of the roof – at the time of construction, there weren’t enough bricks and stucco to make an entire wall.

Erik steps into the house, ducking his head underneath the tin roof; the house was built for someone of a much smaller stature.

As he steps over the threshold, Erik fires something off in rapid Spanish. A low voice replies in the same way from inside the house.

“What did you say,” Alex asks Erik.

“That you’re with me. Come on.”

They walk through the house without seeing the owner, entering through the front door, which isn’t really a door but simply a gap where a door should be, and exiting through the back door, which is constructed, or not, in the same manner. Seizing an opportunity, Alex asks boldly, “Why did you leave?” apropos of nothing.

“Why do you think?”

Alex remains quiet not only because he knows Erik’s answer but also because he, unlike Charles and perhaps even Raven, understands Erik’s restlessness, his odd connection to others around him. Perhaps, because Alex grew up in the same way – not as extreme – but a similar way nonetheless, and Alex too does not view family in the same way that Charles and Sean may.

They reach a garage of sorts, a metal quarter resembling an outhouse more than a home, wherein Erik’s motorcycle is stored. Without needing further explanation, Alex grabs one side of the motorcycle while Erik takes the other; together, the two of them walk it back across the clearing and in front of Jimena’s house.

“You trust them?” Alex says, jerking his head in a motion that encompasses the compound of houses around them.

“Start them up,” Erik nods at the bikes, “And I do.”

The four of them leave quickly after that: as soon as Erik steps into the kitchen, Raven rises without prompting and exits the room; Charles follows her and Erik follows him; outside, Alex starts the engine with a rumble.

“You know how to drive a motorcycle,” Raven directs at Alex, the syllables slightly raised in question.

Alex jerks his head in Erik’s direction as answer.

Erik drives one motorcycle and Alex the other. Raven moves towards Alex first and Charles is left with no choice but to clamber on Erik’s motorcycle again.

Erik starts without warning; Charles tightens his fingers in the material of Erik’s shirt as they speed onto the dirt road and Alex revs up quickly to catch up.

The two motorcycles rush down the road in a rumble of noise and a cloud of dust. They drive without speaking, and Erik only raises his hand to point at a hotel on the riverside when they drive over a cement bridge.

They stop at the edge of town, where the road begins to morph into cobblestone. Several small shops line either side of the road and a few pedestrians make their way through the city along the road. The world here is quiet and still, save for the occasional rumble of a car that drives by, and life here is slow. There are a few locals ambling around the shops: there are restaurants, boasting cold drinks and hot _nacatamales_ , and vendors advertising their fresh fruits, as well as small shops that sell oil, scraps of metal, candles, and other necessities like that.

Alex and Erik park at the edge of the strip of these stores, and Erik leads them to a small restaurant closest to the edge of the road. On the ground, cigarette stubs litter the floor like confetti.

Erik steps into the small restaurant. The open air restaurant is small, housing only a few tables, and lacks a front façade; its roof sags and its plastic chairs are slightly bent, the plastic, colored tarp covering the tables worn and frayed around the edge, but its owner waves at Erik and greets him kindly.

Erik replies in the same way, and the shop owner nods at Charles, Alex, and Raven, before continuing to wipe a glass in his hand with a rag.

Leading them to a secluded corner in the shop, Erik walks, comfortable in this place more than the rest of them.

“The hotel we passed,” Erik says, pulling a sheath of papers from his pocket as he sits at a plastic table. The rest of them follow suit. “Jimena works there,” he says, with the same level of concentration he’s maintained since that fateful time in Schmidt’s office.

“ _Cervesas_?” calls the owner, striding towards the table, finally pleased with the clean glass. The man comes to a stop next to the only occupied table in the shop.

“ _Dos, por favor_ ,” Erik replies, holding up two fingers.

The owner’s gaze lingers on the three foreigners. “ _Familia?_ ”

Erik’s lips quirk into half of a smile.

The owner chuckles to himself, as if entertaining the thought of Erik bringing a whole family of white people to his home, then claps Alex jovially on the shoulder before wandering off to get beers.

“Three people,” Erik explains, continuing on as if nothing had happened. He spreads the three papers across the plastic tarp. Each paper stares up at the ceiling, pencil lines forming three individual faces: a man with wire glasses and thick cheeks, a man with gaunt features and thin lips, a man with dark eyes and a brooding look on his face. And at the bottom of each sketch, in the same order, are three names: Iain Owens, Edwards Palacios, and Roberto Moreno, respectively. “This man,” Erik points to Owens, “Works for Switzerland’s government. This one,” to Moreno, “Involved in the Nicaraguan government. And this one,” Erik gestures to Palacios, “Came to ask for funding.”

“And he was the one who put together that file,” Alex says, leaning forward. The sweaty skin of his forearms sticks to the tarp as he does so.

“Right,” Erik says.

“Jimena?” asks Raven.

“Yeah. She likes drawing.”

Raven hums and brushes a thumb against the corner of one of the sketches.

“ _Hola, Jimena_ ,” calls the owner. Both Jimena and the owner make their way towards the table, the former carrying a steaming Styrofoam plate of _nacatamales_ , which are steamed corncakes, and the latter carrying two beers.

Both the nacatamales and the beer makes their way onto the table; Jimena sits down in between Alex and Raven and the owner walks out of the shop to talk to the owner of the vendor next door.

“This one,” Erik points to Morena after nodding at Jimena, “He’s working for someone else. He’s not here of his own accord.”

As Erik speaks, Raven leans over to inspect Jimena’s lunch. “Try some?” Jimena asks Raven, speaking in slow English, her words thick with accent. Raven smiles.

“How do you know?” Charles speaks.

“I can tell. I’ve hunted men like this for years, Charles – ”

“Alright, alright,” Charles cuts Erik off before the other man can continue like Charles thinks he will.

“Anyway, there’s a bigger picture here,” Erik says. “All three of these men are involved in something much more than themselves.” _And it’s a danger to eliminate any of them before we know more,_ goes unsaid.

“That’s why you haven’t – ” Alex stops in the middle of his sentence but it seems as though everyone understands his meaning.

“The secretary,” Jimena says slowly, turning the words over in her mouth before she speaks, “I was – going to talk to her.” Jimena points to Palacios and Owens. “Flying out. Four days.”

Charles looks at the three sketches and then at the way Jimena peels apart her nacatamales carefully, her delicate fingers pressing against the warm dough.

“What’s the hotel like?” Raven asks, leaning in. The gears in her head whir; she hasn’t had a chance to feel this sudden flare of adrenaline since before Cuba. Now, she wants to _do_ something; she wants to help and, like Erik, she wants tangible results.

“Hotel de Valencia,” Erik adds helpfully.

Jimena pulls out a scrap piece of paper – an envelope that’s been carefully unfolded – and a piece of graphite from her starchy uniform. Paper goes onto plastic as she places the envelope onto the tarp and begins to sketch out the blueprints of the hotel.

As Raven and Alex watch Jimena raptly, Charles turns towards Erik.

“What are you not telling me,” he asks lowly, so the others won’t overhear.

“I’ll be back,” Erik tells the three of them, “I’m going out for a bit.” Alex and Raven nod but their eyes remain fixed on the way Jimena sketches quickly, a rough floor plan emerging out of the paper.

Erik rises and Charles is quick to follow. They leave the restaurant quickly; on the street, Erik holds up a hand in thanks to the owner, who’s engaged in conversation with a man in a blue uniform.

Around them, as more and more workers come in – from the automobile shops on the fringes of the county, from the nearby processing unit, from the police station down the road and the post offices and banks – the street begins to fill. Charles walks close to Erik in order not to lose sight of him.

“Moreno,” Erik begins lowly, bending his neck slightly so Charles can hear, “Was in correspondence with Shaw for a while. Up until the Cuban missile crisis.”

Charles sidles a little closer to better hear.

“Frost went to this man once she escaped the CIA compound,” Erik continues.

“How do you know?”

They walk across dirty roads, past colorful buildings – painted blue and purple and beige but beginning to peel around the edges – and iron bars over glass windows. In the nooks of the street, in the small shadows of doorways and stone steps, a few figures linger, their eyes sharp as they watch everyone who walks by.

“She told me.”

“She – ”

“She came to me, after Shaw died.”

Around them, a few shoppers and a few works give them curious gazes, but after Erik purposefully nudges Charles’ arm – two fingers rise to a temple, brushing against sweaty strands of hair there before pressing against skin – no one pays them any mind.

“I was in Brazil,” Erik continues, “At a bar that – that I knew Shaw’s accomplices used to frequent. Azazel told me to look there, after Cuba. I’d been there before,” Erik carefully does not mention that, the time he was there before, he carved a knife into one man and shot another, “And Frost came to me there.

“Somehow, the Nicaraguan government helped Frost out. They bargained with Russia and, in return for her freedom, she had to go to the Nicaraguan government. They wanted her – they wanted her to find other mutants.”

“And she came to you,” Charles says, “How did – ”

“She guessed that Azazel would tell me, somehow. And so she came to me, and she asked me to come with her – to Nicaragua. They, the government, they wanted to do,” Erik’s mouth curls with something ugly, “ _Tests_ on me. On my ability.”

“You refused,” Charles surmises, his fingers tightening into fists.

“I let her leave,” Erik says, “I was wearing the helmet and I told her to leave.”

“And?”

“And she left for Nicaragua. She left me a card and I flew out here to follow her.”

Charles frowns. The two of them continue to walk side by side, their elbows slightly brushing every time one or the other presses close as they’re forced to share the sidewalk.

“You wanted to find the rest of Shaw’s accomplices, but – ”

“I thought I would,” Erik says, “But I found Jimena before I found anyone else. I flew in and took a cab to the city, started walking out to the hotel when I saw Dante.

“Seven years old,” Erik shakes his head, “And he was standing on the side of the road. I walked right up to me. He looked at me and then the ground between us – ”

“He can move earth?”

“He can move minerals,” corrects Erik, “Cleans out the water for us and plucks salt right from the earth.”

“Incredible,” Charles murmurs, as they near a corner of the cobblestone road and a group of colorful fruit vendors.

 

* * *

 

Two men walk along the side of a dirty road somewhere in the streets of León. Both of them have just purchased fresh fruits from a local vendor, and both of them eat as they walk towards the edge of the city.

They both eat slowly, although for different reasons: Erik eats slowly because he savors fresh fruits, having gotten too little of them during his teenage years, and now he lets the juice drip over his mouth before swiping at it with his tongue; Charles eats slowly because Erik does so, and Charles doesn’t want to finish before Erik does.

By the time they’ve almost reached the outskirts of the city, Erik tosses away his mango seed, which has been completely cleaned, throwing it to the side of the road. Charles follows suit. They keep walking.

Erik resumes the conversation without preamble.

“I stopped to talk to Dante for a moment, and then his sister came by. I talked to her and found out that she worked at the hotel.”

Charles breathes out and their shoulders brush as Charles exhales.

“I found that Palacios and Moreno were working together,” Erik explains, “Which is strange, seeing as both of them are human. I moved in with Jimena three weeks ago, and,” Erik shrugs, “Here I am.”

“And the file?”

“Moreno wanted copies.” Erik shrugs. “Asked for two and Jimena changed it to three.”

“And she took the extra,” Charles muses.

Tufts of dirt rise every time they step. Sweat gleans on both their foreheads and the humidity curls around them like a snake.

“Frost is dead,” Erik says suddenly.

“I – what?”

“They took her in right before I came to Nicaragua. They,” Erik’s fists tighten, “They strung her up, experimented on her.”

Charles’ mouth dries.

“You can’t trust them, Charles, you can’t trust any of them. They’re trying to find our strengths and our weaknesses – your weaknesses. They’re trying to hunt us down and they’re scaring all of the governments of the world into doing the same. I didn’t want to tell them,” Erik finishes, but Charles hears, “I didn’t want to scare them.”

“Erik,” Charles begins, but he doesn’t know how to finish his sentence. A chill of fear causes the hair on the back of his neck to rise, regardless of the heat outside; Charles doesn’t have to use his powers to detect the hatred that rolls off of Erik in waves. Charles thinks briefly of sharp scalpels and tight wires, faceless doctors and sterile labs.

A cluster of shops and vendors rises out of the horizon as cobblestone fades into dirt road.

“I was going to kill them,” Erik says then. “When I came here, to Nicaragua.”

“You wouldn’t kill the men in those ships in Cuba, but you’d kill the men here?”

“It’s not the same.”

“I know,” Charles says, not quite coldly.

Erik continues. “But we don’t know how many of them are out there. Owens, Palacios, Moreno – they’re all linked together. Kill one, and the rest of them double their defenses.”

“The things they do – no one does anything about it?”

“The money or the mutants?”

“Both.”

“It’s common knowledge,” Erik all but spits, “It’s just that no one has the power to do anything about it. And they’re quiet about what they do to us.”

They near the restaurant.

“Either way,” Erik continues, “Their labs aren’t here. The most important thing now is to dismantle their organization.”

“By killing them?” Charles asks quietly.

“I don’t know yet, Charles,” Erik snaps, but it’s not a no.

Charles presses his mouth into a thin line. “What will you start with?”

“Following Palacios.”

“Following him – ”

“To Acapulco.” Erik stops in front of a restaurant with plastic chairs and plastic tarp. “We’re going to Mexico.”


	6. Six

Sunlight is painted across the grounds of Westchester mansion in thick streaks. Life is serene in the days leading up to the Cuban missile crisis. It is October 24th, 1962.

On the gravel road that wraps around the mansion, Charles is with Hank, their hearts pounding in sync as they race around the grounds. Sean rummages around the kitchen, humming underneath his breath. Raven, blue and scaly, pumps a metal weight in the sunlit room on the ground floor.

In the shade of a rustling tree by the garage, two figures stand by a motorcycle.

“Where did you learn how to ride one?”

“I was on the run. Sprinted out of Prague and there was one right on the side of the road.”

“And you just hopped on.”

Erik shrugs.

Alex looks at him disbelievingly and Erik casually ignores his gaze.

Alex shifts and rubs a spot on his upper arm; there’s a bruise hiding there underneath his shirt, a bruise inflicted by the same man who stands now inspecting the bike. The two of them have spent several afternoons in the gym practicing hand to hand combat.

“Still sore,” Erik says. He doesn’t phrase it like a question.

“Yeah.” Alex watches Erik twist metal with his powers. “Am I – am I getting better?”

“You’re getting faster,” Erik says. He looks up briefly. “You’re getting better.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Metal clinks against metal and then the engine rumbles suddenly, coming to life.

“Are you going to teach me?” Alex asks.

“Do you want to learn?”

Alex smiles.

 

* * *

 

Two motorcycles roar as they speed down a dirt road. Sweat drips onto skin; the air is thick and sultry. An orange sun begins to sink below the horizon. It is December 5th, 1963.

Four shadows split from the darkness of the motorcycles’ shadows: Raven and Alex climb off their motorcycle and enter the home without discussion. Outside the house, Erik and Charles linger.

“You’re not happy with me.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you going to try and stop me?”

“From leaving?”

“From killing.”

“You never said you were killing. You said you didn’t know,” Charles says, carefully controlling his voice.

“How else am I supposed to stop them?”

“There are ways, Erik.”

“I’m not asking you to come with me.”

“I never said I wanted to come with you.”

“So you’ll let me go?”

“You can go wherever you want, my friend, I can’t stop you.”

Erik shifts slightly. Beside him, the motorcycle hums.

“Charles,” Erik says lowly.

“Let’s go inside,” Charles cuts him off.

Erik hesitates before following him inside.

On the kitchen table is a sketch of the Hotel de Valencia. Alex stands in front of the map that Erik’s mounted on the wall and Raven stands over the rickety table, palms flat on the wood, peering down at the floor plan Jimena sketched out for her.

“It wouldn’t be hard at all,” Raven says, continuing her train of thought aloud even as the two men make their way into the kitchen.

“What are you on about?” Charles says curiously, coming over to stand next to her.

“Is that the hotel?” Erik asks.

“Well,” Raven says, standing back a bit so Erik and Charles can look her shoulders, “From what Jimena showed us, it seems easy enough to get into the hotel.”

“Why would you want to get into the hotel for?” Erik frowns.

Raven blinks. She thinks the answer is obvious.

Charles turns to look at her curiously. “You’re not thinking of – ”

“She is,” Alex confirms, turning to join the conversation.

“We get in,” Raven says, “Early in the morning. Charles can freeze Owens, and I’ll slip in. We go through his things, talk to Palacios and find out what’s going on.”

“Sure,” Erik scoffs. He scrapes a chair out from the table and sits.

“Erik,” Charles looks at the man.

In response, Erik waves a hand casually. From the storage room, a silver helmet shudders and floats into the kitchen. “Sebastian Shaw,” Erik announces, and the eyes of every person in the room fixes on the helmet, “Made a deal with the Russians through the Nicaraguan government. In return, they gave him this.”

Charles feels his stomach drop. Alex crosses his arms over his chest. Raven straightens. Erik catches the sound of an engine and feels metal moving towards the house. The helmet drops onto the table with a resounding thud.

“They gave the design to the Nicaraguans as well,” Erik says. Outside, Fernán and Jimena get off a motorcycle. Jimena thanks Fernán and heads inside.

“How do you know?” Charles asks, and at the same time, Jimena steps into the kitchen. She pauses at the sight of the helmet on the table but then moves on to scoop herself a cup of water from the vat.

Erik jerks his head in Jimena’s direction. “Read her mind.”

“I don’t – ”

“Try.”

Charles licks his lips and places two fingers to his temple, turning to face Jimena.

His mind stretches out like an open hand, reaching out with five fingers, only to reach a solid wall, and Charles’ mind halts in its path, metaphorical fingers skipping off the slick surface of Jimena’s thoughts like how rocks skip across the surface of a still pond.

“I – I can’t,” Charles frowns.

“Two metal wires, coiled underneath the skin of each temple.” Erik runs his thumb along the lip of the helmet. When he encounters a dent, he smooths it out with a single brush of his finger. “Every worker at the hotel has one, and so do the three men there.”

“And you can’t take it out,” Alex guesses.

At this, Jimena’s finished filling her cup. She walks over to the table and shakes her head. She taps her temple. “The metal – it reacts with air.”

“Sets off an alarm?” Raven asks.

“Of sorts. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but there’s no way to take it out,” Erik says. He feels the gaze of every person in the room resting on him.

Charles presses his hand onto his knee.

From where he stands by the map still, Alex surmises, “So we won’t be able to get into the hotel.”

“You could still go,” Erik directs as Raven, who has looked away from the conversation, “You know well enough what Owens looks like. But – ”

“It’s too risky,” Charles finishes. “There’s no way to monitor you in there, and we’ve no idea what to expect.”

“So you’ll follow Palacios then,” Raven guesses. She rolls up the sketch of the Valencia Hotel to make room for Jimena, who sits down at the table with her jícaro cup of water.

Jimena, after carefully setting her cup down, reaches into her pocket. She places the back of a receipt onto the table.

“Flight to Mexico City,” Erik reads. “Palacios flies out in four days.”

“Are we going to stay here, then?” Alex asks.

Charles looks up. Carefully, he says, “I don’t think there’s a _we_ here.”

“So we’re not going?” Raven asks. She slips a hair tie around the rolled up sketch and places it onto the table.

“I don’t want to risk – ”

“You shouldn’t,” interrupts Erik. “At least, not now.”

Charles looks at him in surprise. Jimena sips from her cup; she only catches every third word or so, but she watches them carefully.

“They’re starting to watch you,” Erik says, to Charles and Raven and Alex. “That’s the reason I sent you the folder. I’ve no doubt that they’re going to start monitoring all mail that comes in and out of the country, after Frost – ”

“She’s here?” Alex asks.

Erik holds up a hand before continuing. He hadn’t meant to mention Frost; he doesn’t want Raven and Alex to have to know about that yet. “Within a few weeks, there will be agents swarming the mansion, and although they may not know how many mutants are living there right now, if you don’t go back and strengthen your barriers and wards, they will soon.”

“He’s right,” Raven says suddenly. “But that doesn’t mean we have to all go back to the mansion.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Charles interjects firmly.

“But Erik’s – ”

“I meant the three of us, Raven,” Charles says, a little quieter, looking from Alex to her. “What Erik does is his own business, and – ”

“Either way,” Alex says, not completely unkindly, “The wheels of the jet are shot. Ran them into the ground when we flew in.”

“Who flew?” Erik asks.

“I did,” Raven says. She watches Erik. “Hank’s been teaching me.”

“Hank,” Erik repeats, and the name sounds foreign in his mouth.

“You can fix it, right?” she asks.

Erik hesitates. “Yes,” he says finally. Inwardly, he thinks he’ll have to start tonight so the other three can fly out as soon as possible.

“Right,” Raven nods, “So then we fly back to the mansion first.”

Alex starts, “And then – ”

“We’ll decide from there,” Charles says quickly, not wanting to be drawn an argument. “For now, let us just concentrate on Westchester.”

“I – right,” Alex nods, seeing the sense in the professor’s logic. “Good idea.”

Raven nods as well, feeling a little better with the beginnings of a plan. “We’ll leave as soon as Erik’s finished, then.”

“Alright,” Charles says, slowly, with a sense of finality as the subject comes to a close.

“If that’s done,” Raven straightens, “Jimena was going to show Alex and I the sugar cane plantation.” Save for her brief time in Oxford and Cuba, Raven has never been out of the country before, and she and Alex both still have an innocent kind of curiosity bubbling underneath their worry. They hope Jimena will show them coffee bushes and avocado trees on the way to the plantation, and maybe colorful birds, too.

Alex nods and Jimena rises, wood scraping against dirt. Raven picks up the roll of paper and turns to Jimena. “Do you think you could draw me, too?” She points at herself and then to a piece of graphite on the table, and then to herself. Jimena nods and to Alex, Erik says, “I’ll head down to the jet, see what I can do.”

“See you tonight then,” Alex says, without looking at Erik.

Erik rises as well, and then automatically turns to Charles before remembering himself. Erik turns towards the door and steps outside as the two women inside begin laughing at each other.

Something squeezes in Charles’ chest and, before anyone can call him back or ask him to walk down to the sugar cane plantation with them, he follows Erik outside.

“I’ll come with you,” Charles says, breaking into a light jog to catch up to Erik, who’s begun walking down the dirt road.

Erik spares him a glance before looking back at the long road ahead.

“Not taking the bike today?” Charles tries to ask lightly.

“Plantation’s further back,” Erik gestures behind them, “They’ll take the motorcycles. Jimena can drive one.”

“Oh,” Charles says, and after that, he falls into step and into silence with Erik. He rubs the bones of his left wrist with his right thumb nervously, then silently chastises himself: he’s spent plenty of time alone with Erik before, a whole road trip, in fact, and so there shouldn’t be any reason to be acting like this now.

But, then again, things aren’t the same as how they were before – both of the men think of this, as they walk quietly. Erik, who normally saves energy to do more productive things than reminiscence, thinks of a memory from a while ago: two white hands clutching a stone balustrade, impossibly green grass, and an enormous satellite as round and as large as the moon. Charles, who has long stopped fighting the tide of his thoughts, wonders what went wrong, and why, here of all places, fate has suddenly decided they will meet.

Ahead of them, the road unwinds lazily, rising and falling with the shallow undulations of the land.

Erik breaks the silence suddenly, blurting out a question that’s been hovering on the edge of his thoughts for a while. “Will you come with me?”

“To Mexico?” Charles asks.

Erik looks at him.

“I can’t,” Charles says. “And neither can you, for that matter.”

“I thought you said you weren’t stopping me.”

“I’m not,” Charles says bitterly, “Hank McCoy is.”

Erik raises an eyebrow.

“He’s having trouble with some equipment back at the lab. He can’t get Alex’s G-suit to cooperate for some reason. It’s malfunctioning off and on. And Cerebro’s not,” Charles pauses, “It’s not working the way it used to.”

“McCoy wants my help,” repeats Erik disbelievingly.

Charles snorts. “He doesn’t want your help; he wants your powers.”

“He would, wouldn’t he,” Erik murmurs thoughtfully.

“We’ll fly the jet back,” Charles decides. “Back to Westchester, and then you can go on to Mexico from there. You have four days, before Palacios leaves. You’ve nothing to do here anyways,” he finishes, slightly callously.

“You’ve thought this through.”

“I haven’t had much else to do, have I?” Charles snaps.

“No one forced you to come here,” Erik says.

“You’ve told me,” Charles mutters, turning away from Erik. He scuffs the dirt road with his foot. A car drives by, breaking the stillness, and Erik watches it fade into the horizon.

Two of the world’s most powerful mutants walk, side by side, their shadows but not their bodies touching underneath a sinking sun.

They reach a stretch of road that seems identical to the ones they’ve walked upon and the ones that wander out ahead of them, but Erik steps off the dirt path. Charles follows.

Across a grassy pasture and through a dense strip of forest the two of them walk, Erik in the leading the way and Charles following.

The sky disappears, swallowed up by the thick canopy of the trees overhead. Leaves and detritus underfoot crunch and rustle noisily as the two men make their way through the trees. Erik navigates through the trees quietly, his hands coming up over his head to feel for any low hanging branches. Charles follows, although slightly noisier, his gaze fixed on the forest floor, watching for protruding roots.

Around them, leaves rustle.

“Charles,” Erik says quietly.

“Christ, look at the size of these ants,” Charles mutters to himself, stepping carefully over a literal stream of chunks of green leaves carried by large, brownish ants. He shivers.

“Charles, look.”

Erik has stopped and points up into the trees. Charles halts as well – mindfully though, so as not to step on any insects – and follows Erik’s finger into the leaves.

“Oh,” Charles exhales, blinking rapidly as he stares at a white-faced monkey. The monkey, small, no more than ten pounds, is covered with short black fur, save for the fur of its face and upper arms, which is white and gives it its name.  “Oh, hello, I – ”

The monkey backs away quickly, its long arms and legs grappling with thin branches in its haste to get away. The two men watch the monkey disappear back into the canopy, its curled tail slipping between two large leaves, before speaking again.

“God, I didn’t even notice it was there,” Charles breathes out, all previous awkwardness forgotten. “You know, from the road, I never would’ve guessed, but I suppose it makes sense that there’s so much wildlife here, in the forests.”

Erik grunts in response and continues making his way through the forest.

“I can’t imagine what other animals must be hidden in the trees,” Charles says aloud. “Imagine spending a day in the _real_ forests, the dense ones on the Caribbean side of the country.”

“A bite from a bullet ant and then we’ll see how excited you are about the wildlife here,” Erik says.

“Imagine living in the time of Darwin,” Charles continues, “Sailing around the world and finding these strange new creatures – how would that feel?”

Erik grunts as he climbs over a particularly large clump of tree roots that have grown over a boulder.

“It’s beautiful,” Charles concludes, slightly out of breath from his trek through the thick strip of forest, as they step into a large field, which is interrupted only by a large pile of metal in the middle.

“Up on the slopes of the volcanoes,” Erik says, as they walk towards the jet. Charles steps forward and they fall into step, side by side once more. “The humidity is higher there, and there’re always clouds. They call them cloud forests.”

“Really?”

“Do you think I’m lying?” Erik asks, although without bite.

Charles doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, he says, “And the coasts here too – they’re gorgeous. We saw them when the jet flew over.”

“Come on,” Erik reminds him, stepping forward, moving towards the jet. Charles purses his lips and follows.

“Will you have to go inside?” Charles asks.

“To fix the frame? No.” Erik stops a few yards away from the jet and plants his feet into the grass. “But I’ll have to go in afterwards, to make sure everything’s still functional.”

“Right,” Charles says, and he watches, transfixed, as Erik raises a hand.

The metal is an instrument and Erik is its conductor; with every wave of his hand, large sheets of the metal covering the jet flatten out easily, and with every curl of a finger, the thick skeleton straightens itself. Erik’s lips part in concentration and Charles watches him fix the jet with ease.

The last dent in the jet smooths itself with a flick of Erik’s wrist, and the man lets his hands drop to his sides. Erik turns towards Charles, almost daring him to comment.

“Inside, then,” Charles says airily, brushing past Erik.

They enter the jet quietly, and inside, save for a thin layer of brown dirt over every surface, the jet looks perfectly intact.

“Well,” Charles says. “I think it looks functional.”

Erik huffs.

Charles makes his way towards the front of the jet, heading for the cockpit.

Before he can get too far, however, five fingers reach out, into the space between Charles and Erik, tripping on Charles’ wrist before wrapping around the skin right above there. “Careful,” Erik says preemptively, pulling Charles back just as the metal there creaks.

A long shadow stretches across a sloping wall of the jet as Erik suddenly leans very close, his feet shuffling forward, his knees ending up on either side of Charles’ legs. Charles inhales shakily, the smell of dust and sweat and Erik swirling into his lungs. Erik pushes Charles into the armrest of a seat with one hip while simultaneously turning and waving a hand. The metal of the jet, the metal where Charles stood a moment before, groans before shuddering, and then finally straightening out. As the skeleton of the jet creaks, dust falls.

And they’ve been here before, two silhouettes haloed in falling dust and the blurry light of an orange sunset.

But not quite, because, last time, Erik’s leg didn’t brush against Charles’ thigh, and last time, Charles’ heart didn’t hammer quite as hard.

Charles stands up a little straighter, grabbing onto Erik’s elbow for support as he does so. Erik watches him.

This close, Charles is forced to tip his head back slightly to meet Erik’s burning gaze. His lips move of their own accord as Charles starts to ask, “Will we ever – ”

Erik’s mouth opens, and his tongue begins to form three words – _not now, Charles_ – but his tongue falls limp, and he doesn’t speak because both of them know it anyway. They can both feel the stirrings of a war, in the same way that sailors can feel the stirrings of a storm in their bones.

Now is not the time; it seems as though it is never the right time. Before, there was an impending war, and now, there is another impending war; both of them know it, whether or not they admit it.

But neither man moves away either.

Both of them wait, waiting for the other to move.

Then Erik leans forward, just slightly, a movement that causes the material of Charles’ slacks to rustle against each other – that is how close they stand to each other – one of his hands reaching forward, very slowly, reaching for Charles’ hip.

And, this close, both of them can hear the other’s heartbeat, in the quiet stillness of the dusty jet, in the hollowness of the belly of the whale.

Two calloused fingers reach through the dust and find the seam of a front pocket; Erik pinches the material of Charles’ front pocket before dipping two fingers into there like dipping two fingers into a jar of paint, his skin sliding against the buttery material of Charles’ khakis.

Charles exhales shakily, his breath rattling in his ribcage, as Erik’s two fingers touch the fabric covering Charles’ trembling thigh. Erik watches Charles as his fingers curl around something in Charles’ pocket.

Erik pulls back then, his hand sliding out of Charles’ pocket and his feet sliding across the floor of the jet.

A black king disappears into Erik’s fist.

“It’s late,” Erik says, finally, his expression unreadable. “We should get back.”

Charles watches Erik step away, walking towards the cockpit. Charles’ back is still molded against the seat behind him.

A rumble emanates from beneath them as Erik presses a button and then flips a switch. Erik waits for a moment, one finger poised on the switch, his body reverberating slightly with the hum of metal. Then, satisfied with the jet’s performance, flips the switch off. The sounds of the engine fade into nothingness.

“Finished?” Charles asks.

“Finished.”

Charles peels himself off the seat, the imprint of an armrest still branded into the backs of his thighs, and heads off of the jet, Erik following him.

The two of them head back to the house, silence hanging heavy over their heads.


	7. Seven

Two men walk side by side along a dirt road. It is still December 5th, 1963.

They do not talk to one another – although much remains unsaid between them, waiting – but they walk closely; the taller man’s arm occasionally brushes against the other man’s shoulder.

Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier make their way back to a house that is cloaked in darkness. Inside, as they walk into the kitchen that smells faintly, tantalizingly, of fried food and meat, Charles brushes his fingers against his temple. Erik flicks his wrist and a lit kerosene lamp floats in from outside.

“They’re asleep already,” Charles murmurs, pulling up a chair and sitting at the kitchen table.

Erik nods once and then sits as well. He floats an aluminum pan over from where it perches on the crude stove and places it onto the table. From their home in the spaces in the wall, two metal plates move across the room and situate themselves in front of Erik and Charles.

“What’s this?” Charles picks up a blue feather that sits on the table. He holds the feather up and examines it in the flickering light. The feather resembles an arrow more than a feather: at the base, near what would be the nib of a quill, the bluish plumes are normal, but about halfway up the feather, the plume disappears, leaving a bare shaft. The plumes of the feather resume about an inch from the tip of the feather, like the feathers on an arrow. The blue material of the plumes of the feather glints in the light.

“Motmot feather,” Erik says. “It’s a small bird.”

“Hm,” Charles turns the feather over in his hand.

Erik uses a wooden spoon to push _gallo pinto_ , red kidney beans cooked with rice and onions, onto each of their plates. Then, he places fried plantains next to the rice.

They eat quickly, their metal spoons, which have been twisted into shape by Erik’s powers, scraping against their plates. Erik rises only once throughout the meal to scoop a jícaro cup full of water out of the vat of water, which has been nearly drained of water after a day’s use. As he rises, Charles reaches across the table and takes one of his plantains, metal spoon scraping against metal plate unashamedly. Erik huffs amusedly when he sits back down.

When they’ve all but finished their meal, Erik rises for a moment. His metal plate, empty save for his plantains, slides over the table.

Erik heads into the storage room for a moment, and Charles filches the rest of Erik’s plantains, before finishing his own rice and beans.

Erik reemerges after a few moments, carrying a thin cardboard box.

He clears the desk with a single swipe of two fingers, metal plates sliding to the edge of the table. The box lands on the table with a soft plop. Inside of it, chess pieces slide against one another, clicking loudly.

“Care for a game,” Erik says, although he doesn’t phrase it like a question.

Charles exhales slowly, leaning back in his chair, although carefully so the uneven legs won’t topple over.

They set up the board quickly; the last piece is placed into position when Erik reaches into his pocket to pull out the black king.

“Will it ever end?” Charles breaks the silence, a few rounds into the game.

“If it doesn’t, will you ever stop fighting?”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“No,” Charles echoes. He knew the answer before he asked.

And then Charles asks, “What did you feel, when you killed Shaw?”

He looks at the light shining on the skin of Erik’s knuckles as the other man reaches out to move his rook. A thin crescent of dirt is stuck underneath each one of Erik’s nails. A streak of grime runs across the back of his hand and Charles wants to rub the skin there until it disappears under Charles’ touch.

“Did it feel,” Charles searches for the right word, pressing his lips tight together before asking “Right?” Charles furrows his eyebrow. He takes one of Erik’s bishops with a knight, picking the black piece up. It disappears into Charles’ fist. His knuckles turn white. “Did you feel – catharsis?”

Erik’s nostrils flare as he exhales. He leans back in his seat, tilting his chin up. The material of his shirt stretches across his chest as he crosses his arms over his belly.

“And what is it to you if I did?”

“Erik, I just – ” Charles unfurls his legs underneath the table, his muscles unclenching as he stretches out. He taps the black bishop against the edge of the table.

A moment later, Charles says quietly, “It won’t be enough, my friend.” He looks at the bishop in his hand, turning it thrice over in his hand before continuing. “It won’t ever be enough.”

“And so what,” Erik says. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t – ” Charles jerks his head to the left, “Erik, how am I – ”

“You always know, don’t you? You told me the night before Cuba – ”

“ – expect me to know everything, I can’t – ”

“You told me that Shaw’s death wouldn’t bring me peace. What will?”

With a clatter, Charles drops the bishop onto the table, next to the chessboard.

“I can’t tell you that,” Charles says slowly. “That, my friend, is up to you.”

“You’re a telepath, Charles, read my mind.” Erik does not look up; he reaches out to push a chess piece forward. “Read my mind, and tell me.”

“Don’t – don’t do that – ”

“That’s what you tried to do these past months, I don’t see the difference now.”

“So you’re letting me into your head now?”

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Erik asks.

“Is this what this is about?”

“You asked me – ”

Charles tears his eyes away from the board. “Do you want me to say I don’t know? Is that what you want?”

“I don’t want – ” Erik exhales loudly and looks up. He meets Charles’ gaze.

Then Erik drops his head to look down at the board; he brings one hand up and cups the back of his neck. “You read my mind that night. You know – ”

“I don’t know _everything_ about you, Christ, Erik, I only wanted you to stay. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I – ”

Erik crosses his arms again, leaning back in his chair once more. The room quiets. Erik stretches his legs out and the edge of his foot brushes against Charles’ ankle. Neither man moves.

“When I was in Auschwitz,” Erik starts, very lowly, “With Shaw, he – he took my control away. I was – I was angry, and he could control my anger, he could – he controlled _me_.”

“I understand,” Charles answers slowly.

“Do you?” Before Charles has the chance to respond, Erik continues. “I need to be in control, Charles, and I saw – what you did, what you can do – I had to know I could still, that I was still – ”

“Yeah,” Charles says, when Erik halts in the middle of his sentence. He runs his thumb along the lip of the table for a heartbeat before pulling away in fear of getting splinters.

Erik sits up, his legs folding at the ankles underneath his chair as he hovers his hand over the chessboard, his eyes fixed on the white queen in concentration. Charles mirrors the movement, sitting up as well. He clears his throat.

“And you?” Erik asks. “What did you feel, when I killed Shaw?”

“I think you know.”

“I don’t want to argue with you,” Erik says.

“Do you think I do?”

“You’re the telepath, Charles.”

“I don’t,” Charles says. “I don’t want to argue with you. And also, just because I can read someone’s mind, doesn’t mean I understand them.”

“Do you understand me?”

Charles moves a knight backwards. He licks his lips.

“I’m not a good man,” Erik says.

“What you went through,” Charles says, “Was terrible, Erik. No one should have to – ”

“But it happened,” Erik interrupts. “It happened and I am – am what I am today because of it.”

“We can’t go back to the past,” Charles reasons, “But we can – ”

“The future,” Erik finishes, “A chance to be the better men.”

Erik takes one of Charles’ rooks. “Check.”

Then, “How did this happen,” Charles says. He frowns and then gestures to the space between himself and the man across from him. “We were – before Cuba, that is – ”

“I can’t change, Charles. I may have lived your lifestyle,” he says, referring to his time on the road with Charles and his time at the mansion, “But I can’t change who I am. I’m not,” Erik pauses, “I don’t – the things you have, they’re not – ” Erik sighs in frustration and lets his eyes flutter shut.

“My friend,” Charles says, the words small, “I thought we could – ”

Roughly, Erik interrupts, “Enough, Charles. There’s no point talking about this any longer.”

“That’s it then?” Charles asks. “You leave the rest of us behind, you didn’t even – you didn’t tell me that you were leaving,” he finishes weakly.

“I told you,” Erik looks away, “I thought you knew. And even then, what could you have done if I’d stayed? What would all of you have done? I’m not like you are, Charles, and they – your students – they saw that, on the beach. I may not have killed the men on the ships, but I killed Shaw. You saw that.”

“Erik, please, I don’t – ”

Erik stands up abruptly. “It’s late.”

“You can’t keep avoiding this, Erik.”

“The decision’s already been made. Like I said before, there’s no point talking about it anymore.”

Charles stands as well. “You won’t even try?”

“I don’t see the point.”

“You don’t – ” Charles huffs exasperatedly. Charles walks around the table, to stand in front of Erik.

“And what now?” Erik asks. His voice has gone hoarse.

Charles exhales, and then steps close. Even with his shoes on, and even with Erik’s bare feet, Charles is forced to tip his head back to look up at the other man. There’s still a space between their bodies where the light leaks through.

They’ve been here before, in this kitchen, but not quite. And, as before, Erik’s hips tilt down slightly, instinctively, his chest aligned with Charles’.

It’s difficult to tell who moves first, who kisses whom, but Erik moves forward as Charles reaches out to grab the back of Erik’s neck; Charles tips his head back further, baring the line of his neck, and Erik’s spine molds into a curve as he leans forward.

There’s an insistent press of teeth against lips, Erik’s incisors against the swell of Charles’ bottom lip, and then the briefest heat of a warm tongue; Charles’ hands fist into Erik’s hair and Erik’s thighs frame Charles’ hips.

For a moment, they kiss quietly, the meeting and the parting of slick mouths. Then Erik drags one hand up Charles’ side, his palm jerking unevenly up the warm material of Charles’ cotton shirt, bumping against the rise and fall of Charles’ flank and the bone of his ribs. His hand reaches the back of Charles’ head and, with his fingers cupping the back of Charles’ neck, Erik pulls back.

Their hot breaths mix in the cool air as they look at each other, both of their eyes dark. Erik looks, just looks, for a long moment, reveling in the sight of Charles’ wet lips and dark eyes and long eyelashes.

And then Erik speaks.

“You know this doesn’t change anything,” Erik breathes out, but the hungry curl of his lips belies his words.

“I know,” Charles says, his fingers tightening around Erik’s nape, “I just wanted to touch you.” As he speaks, Charles’ left hand wanders down the line of Erik’s jaw, to Erik’s chin. With the pad of his thumb, Charles maps the slope of Erik’s bottom lip. “I’ve wanted to touch you.”

“I know,” Erik rumbles, as he moves to kiss Charles again.

A soft groan fills the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of flesh hitting wood. Erik steps closer then, pushing Charles back into the table, and plants two large hands on either side of Charles’ waist. Erik opens up under the other man’s touch, his cheeks flushed and his mouth parted, his mind thrumming with want and his fists curling into Charles’ hips.

Charles leans up into their kiss hungrily, as if he might never kiss Erik again, presses his mouth against Erik’s insistently, as though he wants to tattoo the wrinkles of Erik’s lips onto his own, squeezes his hands around Erik’s nape, as if Erik will stay if Charles holds him tight enough.

Erik pulls back slowly and unhurriedly. He presses the side of his mouth against Charles’ temple, breathing in the scent of Charles there, before collecting the remnants of his willpower. He rasps, “You should sleep, Charles.”

Charles wants to protest but his throat has clenched tight like an unblossomed flower; he can’t bring himself to reach out and grab Erik as the other man steps away.

They pull apart and Charles turns away, the clean lines of his pants ruined, picking up an afghan from the corner of the kitchen before spreading it out on the floor. He clenches his fist, his teeth, his anger.

Erik steps out of the kitchen for a moment, first for just a breath of air, but then is imbued with a desire to run; adrenaline courses through his veins and his muscles tighten and release, tighten and release.

Without thinking too hard about it, Erik sends Charles a telepathic tendril of his intentions, pushing the thought in Charles’ direction and walking briskly away from the house without pausing to see if the other man takes it.

As soon as his foot reaches the dirt road, Erik breaks into a run.

And he runs.

He runs in the dark, nothing around him except for the metal pipes underneath him, guiding him down the road, away from the town of León. Erik runs until the fear finally drains from him, giving way to exhaustion and salty sweat.

He finally stops, feet dragging over dirt until he reaches the grass that lines either side of the road, his jaw slack and mouth hanging open. He places his hands on his knees, chest heaving. All around him, the currents of the earth hum, almost undetectably low. Suddenly, Erik squeezes his hands and his eyes shut.

For a lack of a better way to express himself, he wants to crack the world open and bring out the metal core of the earth underneath with his hands; he wants to bury himself beneath the earth because it will be warm there and all around him metal will feel like a lover’s warm touch.

And, some length along the dirt road, at the same time, Charles Xavier lies on a pile of woven blankets, his fingers tangled across his chest and his eyes staring up at the ceiling. He does not enter Erik’s mind, but follows the edges of Erik’s consciousness, not reading his thoughts but just testing their outline, feeling him fade away in the same way one would feel sand falling through one’s fingers, in the same way that sand falls in an hourglass in warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An image of a motmot feather [here](http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/NIC13MotmotTurquoiseBrow02.jpg%0A).


	8. Eight

The next morning, Charles wakes before anyone else.

For a moment, he remains unmoving. The only sign of his awakening is the sudden fluttering of his eyelashes and a shallow intake of breath.

To his side, atop a thin woven blanket, sleeps Erik. Charles feels the blurry edges of Erik’s mind briefly before pulling back.

In the other room, only a few moments after Charles wakes, Jimena blinks open her eyes.

Within minutes, the house goes from sleeping and still to brimming with energy and commotion. Jimena and Erik move quickly to begin breakfast; Dante rouses sleepily and goes out to clean more water for drinking; Alex packs their things and straps them onto the motorcycles quickly; Raven unpins Erik’s map carefully and rolls it up, securing it with a hair tie; Charles clears the table quickly and brings plates full of steaming food over to the table.

They eat quickly and they talk quietly. All of them, even Dante, move without prompting, either helping load the motorcycles or cleaning up. There doesn’t need to be much talking, only a comment here and there, before they finally clean the aluminum plates, clear the kitchen table, and finish strapping their things onto the bikes outside.

They only linger for a few minutes, just after the sun peeks over the horizon, to say goodbye. Raven and Alex speak excitedly to Jimena, writing down addresses and exchanging drawings and rough sketches. Erik crouches down next to Dante and Charles watches.

In Spanish, Erik tells the boy, “I have to go for a while. Make sure you listen to your sister.” Erik tucks a metal figurine into the boy’s pocket and pats his side. “Stay with her and stay safe, alright, Dante?”

Dante looks at Erik for a long while, then up at Charles, then back at Erik, before nodding. His small fingers delve into his pocket and wrap around the silver dog there.

Erik pats Dante once more before rising. He moves towards Jimena and embraces her tightly. He does not need to thank her.

Erik walks towards the motorcycles after that, not one to linger on such goodbyes, and mounts one easily. Alex and Raven reluctantly follow him.

Charles moves to follow Erik as well, but a strong hand catches his arm before he can.

“Charles,” says Jimena, her voice steady. She meets his gaze and looks at him evenly. Charles doesn’t know what to say.

Then, satisfied with what she sees, Jimena says in slow English, “Take care of him.” She twists her wrists in a wringing fashion and then smiles hesitantly.

“Charles,” Alex calls.

“Goodbye,” Charles says, and as he turns away, Jimena slips a plastic tag into the pocket of his cardigan.

“ _Adiós,”_ Jimena says, waving her hand above her head as the two motorcycles drive off; later, she and Fernán will walk to the field where an imprint of a jet will be and drive the motorcycles back to their homes.

The two motorcycles drive down a dirt road that unwinds across the Nicaraguan countryside, before cutting into the dirt and bramble and finally stopping at the edge of a thick strip of forest. From there, the four passengers unload quickly, shouldering their things onto their backs before beginning the hike across the thick trees.

After hiking across the strip of trees, they reach a large expanse of pasture. A dark jet waits for them.

They climb into the jet, dropping their things into empty seats. Raven and Erik head for the cockpit immediately, while Alex and Charles find places to rest in the main cabin of the jet.

“Buckle in,” Raven says, her voice crackling over the intercom, “It’s going to be a long flight.”

The jet starts with the tap of a button and the flip of a switch, and a little push from Erik’s powers as well. Raven straps herself into the pilot’s seat. The metal clicks as the belt snaps shut.

“Ready?” she turns to ask Erik. He nods in response, eyes fixed on the glass in front of them.

Erik all but lifts the jet into the air, seeing as there’s little room for a runway, and there’s a moment when the engines hitch, but then the jet takes off easily. Erik presses his hand against his thigh tightly, his teeth gritted until the jet flies smoothly in the air, altimeter steadily increasing with every second.

When they reach 25,000 feet, Raven pulls back on the handles easily, the jet smoothing into a straight line across the country of Nicaragua. Beneath them, the country blurs into a cocktail of impossibly green forests, pristine turquoise waters, and drifting white clouds.

“Wow,” Raven murmurs.

“Eyes on the road,” Alex calls amusedly from the main cabin and Raven grins.

Throughout the duration of the trip, which lasts nearly eleven hours, Erik and Raven switch seats twice, Alex falls asleep three times in three different locations on the jet, and Charles watches the world underneath them morph from green to blue to green to brown to green again.

 

* * *

 

In Westchester mansion, Hank McCoy wakes.

He blinks in the darkness and, for a moment, it is unclear what woke him.

Then a loud rumbling overhead, like a roll of thunder, shakes the window panes slightly. Hank throws his sheets over his body and struggles with pants and a shirt. He grabs his wire glasses hastily, rapping against a mahogany door a few rooms away from his own, and nearly trips going down the stairs.

Hank all but slams the front door open, inviting the cold chill of the night into the mansion. He breaks into a run, bare feet flexing with the feel of cold, damp earth underneath him.

He rounds the corner of the mansion, fumbling with his glasses, and looks up at a black jet that hovers above the ground, grass rippling wildly underneath it. Hank’s blue fur ripples uncontrollably under the blasts of air of the engine; he holds a hand up to his eyes to block out the bright headlights. His fangs glint in the light.

“Over here!” he waves his other arm above his head widely.

The jet dips down easily, wheels extending and bumping the ground. The engine rumbles loudly for a moment more before there’s a click; then the engine dies and around them, the grass and Hank’s fur slowly stop moving.

“Professor!” Hank waves again.

The entrance to the jet opens with a hiss, the metal door sliding open to reveal Charles Xavier, pale and haggard, stepping off the jet.

“Professor,” Hank moves forward, grass bending easily underneath his feet, “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Charles grumbles. He looks behind him and then gestures forward. “A rough flight, is all. Come on up, help us with the things.”

“Right, right,” Hank says, and unlike Charles, Hank does not feel the cold sting of the air around them.

Hank makes his way into the jet and, with Charles’ direction, picks up a large duffel bag. His eyes can make out the shadows of Raven and Alex, the former shaking the latter awake. Hank turns away, back to the bag, but not before catching sight of a tall man emerging from the cockpit.

“Erik,” Hank says, not entirely surprised.

“Hank,” Erik says tersely.

And then Erik moves to grab a bag as well; Charles gets the other, and then the three of them move out of the jet. Behind them, Alex and Raven grab two ends of a bag and stumble out as well.

Darkness shrouds the grounds of the mansion, but everyone who exits the plane knows the way well enough, and so they walk in near-darkness to the front door of the mansion.

“Things were well, here?” Charles asks politely, even though he’s felt the warm, pulsing minds of all of his students, as he and Hank walk in front of the group. Erik walks behind the two of them and Alex and Raven behind him.

“Yeah, Ororo was fine.” They walk up the gravel path to the front door, which hangs open invitingly. “Actually, though, Professor, we – ”

Erik stops in his path, just before entering the threshold. “The telephone lines,” he says abruptly.

The two men in front of Erik stop as well.

“I’m sorry, the what?”

“Someone’s rigged your telephone lines.” Erik turns away from Charles to look at Hank.

Alex turns to look at Hank as well. “Have you – ”

“No,” Hank says firmly to Charles, “No, no one’s made a phone call since before you left.”

“Keep it that way,” Erik says, shouldering his way into the house, unbothered by the way Hank chose to address the professor instead of himself.

Raven looks at Charles. Then she adjusts her grip on her bag and then tugs at it, forcing Alex to follow her inside. After that, Charles and Hank follow them in wordlessly.  

They’ve just crossed the foyer when a voice calls out, “Hank, who’s there?”

There’s a click as someone switches on the light, which flickers hesitantly for a moment before steadying into a warm glow. Angel steps out from the adjacent hallway. “Oh my God,” she says.

“Hello to you, too,” Alex grumbles good-naturedly. He drops his end of the bag, trusting Angel to pick up the other end. His hair still sticks up a little bit in the back but no one has told him yet. Alex brushes past her and the tension in the room lessens a little as Alex heads in a little further, not wanting to hear everyone sort through their awkward hellos

Alex pushes into the hallway that leads towards the staircase and his jaw falls slack in surprise. “What the fuck.” Alex whirls around and grabs a handful of his hair, facing the wall, “What the actual _fuck.”_

“Alex?” says a voice halfway down the staircase.

“Fucking hell, what the fucking – ”

Hank rushes into the hallway. “Alex, you – ”

“Hank, what the fuck – ” Alex whirls around to face the staircase, and his lips have gone white.

“Okay, Darwin, maybe now isn’t the best time – ”

“Darwin?” Raven pushes into the hallway; her mouth drops when she sees the person standing on the stairs. “Oh God, Charles? Come here.”

Everyone standing in the foyer makes their way to the hallway, with Charles leading the way.

“Darwin,” Charles smiles widely, “Good to see you.” With a few quick strides, Charles closes the distance between himself and the staircase, going up to clap Darwin on the shoulder. “I thought I recognized you, but I wasn’t sure, what with the fatigue and the awful jetlag,” Charles grimaces, “But how did you do it?”

“Adapted to survive,” Darwin laughs, “Sean found me, actually. I wasn’t – well, I wasn’t me. I was – ”

“He was him, except in a billion tiny pieces,” Angel interjects. Erik hangs back behind the crush of them, watching silently.

Hank frowns. “I don’t think – ”

“I was trying to survive,” Darwin tries to explain, “And to survive that blast, I had to disintegrate. I hung around as a vapor for a bit, and I,” he shakes his head, “I can’t really remember anything except Sean calling to me. And then, I remembered, and I – I came back, as crazy as that sounds.”

“Pretty crazy,” Alex says, not looking away from Darwin for a moment.

“That was a few days ago,” Darwin says, “And so Sean and Angel have been filling me in since.”

“Well,” Charles says warmly, “You’ve come just in time for the holidays. Well done, Darwin.”

“It was actually me, though,” Sean interjects as he descends the stairs, rubbing an eye and tugging at his pajama bottoms idly.

“Sure,” Hank says.

“You guys must be tired,” Angel says before Charles can ask, exactly, how it felt to be a vapor.

“Yeah,” Alex nods eagerly. “We can all talk about how Darwin was a cloud and how I flew here all the way from Nicaragua – without crashing – tomorrow.”

“Here,” Angel says as she grabs the other side of Alex’s duffel bag. Darwin, Raven, Alex, Angel, and Sean head back upstairs, joking loudly; Alex still looks at Darwin disbelievingly until the latter clasps Alex firmly on the shoulders and pulls him in for a tight hug.

Left in the hallway are Charles, Erik, and Hank.

“Well,” Charles says, “Quite the welcome-back party, thank you, Hank.”

“If you told us you were coming back, we could’ve gotten Sean to bake a cake.”

“Fantastic,” Erik says, dryly, speaking for the first time since he entered the mansion.

“We should get to our rooms then,” Charles grimaces. “Truly, Hank, thank you. You didn’t really have to get up.”

Hank shrugs. The three of them make their way up the hallway, heading in the same direction as the group before them, although with less fervor. “The sound of the engine woke me up.”

“We’ll work on the mufflers later, hm?” Charles comments.

“Sure, professor,” Hank answer. They reach the second floor of the mansion. “Well, then, good night.” Hank nods at Erik coolly, and then holds up a hand in the direction of the professor.

“Good night, Hank,” Charles says, and he and Erik ascend one more flight of stairs.

To Erik, Charles says, “Your room should be the same as you left it.”

Erik nods and hitches his bag up from where it began to slide off his shoulders.

They walk down the dark hallway silently, the two of them turning over the day’s events in their minds. When they reach Erik’s door, both of them stop.

Charles hesitates for a heartbeat. He settles for, “Good night, Erik,” eventually.

Erik looks at Charles for a moment. “Good night, Charles.”

Erik disappears into his room, and Charles into his.

Erik pushes the door open to his room and, true to Charles’ word, the room looks exactly the same as the morning of the Cuban missile crisis. Erik drops his things in a corner of the room, intending to unpack the next morning. With a hand, Erik traces the corner of his bed. Then he undoes his belt and yanks off his leather jacket: these articles of clothing fall to the floor with a quiet clunk and hiss, respectively. Erik falls onto the bed and sleeps.

Across the hallway, Charles does essentially the same, shucking off his cardigan and moving to shuck his pants off as well, when there’s a quiet knock at his door.

“Come in,” Charles says, although he wishes for nothing more than a long slumber.

“Hi,” Raven says.

“Raven, it’s been – ”

“I know,” she says quickly, “But I wanted to – to ask about Mexico.”

Charles frowns. “What about it? It’s only Erik that’s – ”

“That’s the thing,” she says.

“You want to go?”

“I think,” she hesitates. “I think you should go.”

“Go with him?” Charles scoffs.

“Why not?

Charles exhales shakily. “Raven, when I – when Erik left, that night, I thought I’d never see him again.”

“But he’s here. Now.”

“After this,” Charles tries to sound convincing, “After this, I’ll go back to the mansion and Erik will go his own way. After this, it’ll be normal.”

“This is the last time, isn’t it?” Raven asks. Her voice has suddenly gone quiet.

“I don’t know if we’ll see Erik after this,” Charles says quietly.

“But,” she frowns. “Why? I don’t – ”

Charles turns away. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit.” Raven crosses her arms.

“It hurts,” Charles says, bitterly, “I don’t want to have to be reminded of – of what I couldn’t do – ”

“What do you mean, what you couldn’t do?”

“ – and I just think it’d be better for us to go on our separate ways.”

“You’re afraid,” Raven accuses.

“What would I be afraid of?”

“I don’t know. Afraid of facing your mistakes. Afraid of admitting that not everyone thinks the way you do. Afraid of change.”

“And are you?” Charles turns to face her.

“I’m not the one hiding,” Raven says lowly.

“I’m not _hiding_ – ”

“ – I don’t see why you’re stuck here,” she waves a hand to encompass the entirety of the mansion, “All day, doing paperwork and trying to hide what we’re doing here, trying to hide the school – ”

“ – waiting until the right time, Raven, things don’t happen so abruptly – ”

“ – here, while there are _real_ problems, out there, Charles!”

“And so what, is Erik solving those problems? By going off and destroying them? That only – ”

“It’s more than anything you’re doing here,” Raven snaps.

“Go with him then!” Charles explodes. “Leave, just like he left!”

A year ago, Charles would’ve never burst out like that, never lost his temper or let his anger bubble up so far in his throat. But for him, it has been a long twelve months, and he is still raw with betrayal, still simmering from the memory of Cuba. And so he lashes out because Charles Xavier is not the same man he was one year ago.

“You don’t think I will,” Raven says softly.

“He’s not – ”

“Like us, yeah, you’ve said.”

Charles’ nostrils flare as he exhales heavily.

“But Charles, that didn’t stop me from talking to him. From understanding him. And I don’t know about Hank, but it certainly didn’t stop you or Alex either!”

“You don’t know – ”

“You’re angry, Charles, but you loved him more than any of the rest of us did! If he’s not like you,” Raven inhales with a shudder, “Then I’m not like you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t either,” she reasons. “You tried to keep him, I know, I heard – ”

Charles flushes. “What?”

“ – and I understand, Charles, but you don’t have to pretend – ”

“I’m not pretending, I – ” Charles breaks off with a sigh. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“You didn’t want Erik to leave either.”

“I didn’t know he was leaving.”

“No one did. I heard him that night; that was the only reason why I woke up.”

“And you decided it’d be a good idea to follow him.”

Raven looks out the window and slouches.

“Why didn’t you go with him? That night?” Charles asks. He moves towards a chair and sits.

“You’re my brother,” she answers simply, “And, despite your many, many flaws, I love you.”

“And I, you.”

The windowpane rattles with wind. A while later, Charles blurts, “I would date you, if you were blue. And weren’t my sister, that is.”

Raven doesn’t answer. In her silence, Charles explains, “That night, you asked me – ”

She says, “I remember.”

“I can’t – I can’t stop you from leaving. If you wanted to.”

“But you could stare at me disapprovingly if I did.”

Charles smiles wryly. “What good would that do?”

Raven does not voice how much Charles’ approval means to her.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “If I’d want to go.”

“It’s still a possibility then,” Charles says.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “It’s not for you?”

“I’ve a school here,” Charles spreads his arms, encompassing his study and his students in a wide gesture, “I can’t leave. Not for long.”

“But if you didn’t?”

“The school gives me purpose, Raven,” Charles says eventually. “I teach here, and I – I’ve built a life for myself here.”

“A life without – ”

“Without violence,” Charles says firmly.

“What about Moira?”

“What about her?”

Raven lifts a chin defiantly. “You wouldn’t say that the way you took her memories away – you’d say that that’s not violent?”

“It was dangerous to let her – ”

“I’m not trying to criticize you, I’m just making sure you know what you’re talking about, Charles.”

“I did what I thought was best,” Charles says slowly. He feels himself sinking lower into his chair and he suddenly feels very tired. “What are you trying to say?”

“I was surprised, when we came to Nicaragua, and when I found out that Erik hadn’t – he hadn’t killed anyone since Cuba.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charles frowns.

“The world isn’t divided so neatly. Maybe, there’s a way, maybe – ”

Charles sighs. “I don’t know, Raven. Maybe, alright?”

“Thank you,” Raven sighs.

“What?”

“I just – I wanted you to admit it, that you still thought there was a chance.”

“A chance?”

“For Erik to come back. For us to be,” she hesitates, “A family again.”

Charles opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

“And I know,” she continues, “I know you want him to come back. We all do. So you don’t have to pretend like there’s no way he can come back, alright?”

“Alright,” he says faintly.

Raven leaves the room, closing the door shut behind her.

For a long while, Charles sits, staring into the dark window of his room.

Then he stands and pulls off his slacks before sliding underneath his covers without bothering to change his clothes or wash up. He brushes against the minds of his students – Alex and Darwin murmuring quietly in Alex’s room; Angel and Sean already asleep in their respective rooms; Raven brushing her teeth quietly, staring into the mirror and seeing yellow eyes; Hank carefully pulling off his glasses and wiping grass and gravel from between his toes; Ororo dreaming of snow in her room. And then Charles brushes around the warm corners of Erik’s mind, which pulse seductively with the tides of sleep, before falling into a deep sleep himself.

 

* * *

 

 Darkness creeps across the grounds of the Xavier mansion. It is November 2nd, 1962.

A few hours ago, in the study room on the third floor of the mansion, two men finished a rather stilted conversation. Now the grandfather clock on the first floor of the sitting room chimes, alerting the shadows of the hour: one o’clock in the morning.

A tall man emerges from his room silently, wearing his leather jacket like armor, fingers clenching around a leather briefcase. The man makes his way down three flights of stairs without a single noise, but on the second floor, in the bedroom closest to the stairwell, a girl wakes.

The man walks down the main hallway that leads to the front of the house, but stops suddenly as soon as he reaches the foyer.

“Erik,” calls a voice behind him.

The man with the suitcase turns.

Out of the shadows of the main hallway, walks out another man, slightly shorter in stature, wrapped in a gray cardigan. Quietly, this man says, “You’re leaving.”

“Are you going to stop me?” asks the man with briefcase, although he speaks with no inflection.

The second man smiles ruefully. Then he moves in close, quickly, his steps closing the distance between them. The second man leans up and places a deliberate kiss on the first man’s mouth; the man with the first man freezes.

With his free hand, the taller man snaps out and grabs a thin wrist, hard enough to grind the delicate bones there. Slowly, blue eyes shift into yellow, feline ones.

“Are you coming with me?” the man asks.

“Not today,” the girl with the yellow eyes says, her lips curling, “Not now.”

For a moment, neither of them speak. And then the man nods once, chin dipping down to his chest.

“Goodbye, then,” she says. The man lets go of her wrist and then steps away, turning on his heel. The front door opens with a hiss without touch; the man walks out, gravel crunching underneath his dress shoes, to the oak tree a few yards from the mansion. There, the tall man meets another man with red hands and red skin.

They disappear in a cloud of black dust.

 

* * *

 

 Sean Cassidy wakes with a start. He’d been dreaming of colorful fish when a wave of the ocean crashed over them, waking him from his sleep. He looks at the calendar on the wall beside his bed. It is December 7th, 1963.

Sean yawns, enjoying the warm cocoon of his blankets for a moment, before the smell of breakfast wafts up to him from the first floor: perfectly fried eggs, thick cinnamon buns, and the sweet smell of agave nectar.

With one final, contented sigh, Sean climbs out of bed, washes up, changes his clothes, and heads downstairs.

Although today, it is slightly more crowded than the last few weeks due to the return of several students, when Sean finally reaches it, the kitchen resembles a typical morning in the Xavier mansion: Ororo perches on a counter, her heels knocking against the cabinet underneath, watching Angel pull a tray of cinnamon buns from the oven; Alex and Darwin knock elbows and shoulders amicably as they break eggs into a pan of oil; Raven, blue and scaly although dressed in her regular clothes, clears the table and Hank cracks open a window, letting the sweet morning breeze mix in with the scent of breakfast.

“You know,” Sean yawns, “Maybe we should actually start eating in the dining room now. That way Alex’s elbow won’t crush my eggs every time I sit next to him.” Sean nods his head in a movement that encompasses the conglomeration of people in the kitchen.

“Then breakfast wouldn’t be any fun,” Darwin comments amusedly. He turns an egg over with his bare hands, the tips of his fingers turning into a silvery alloy that allows him to touch the hot oil without pain.

“Ew, Darwin,” Angel scrunches her nose as she places her tray of cinnamon buns on the counter. Ororo, equip with a squeeze bottle of agave nectar, squirts the sweet condiment onto the cinnamon buns liberally.

“He washed his hands, leave him alone,” Alex retorts, sliding the egg onto a platter. Sean takes the platter and nudges Hank out of the way as he walks it over to the large table in the middle of the kitchen.

“Good thing the kitchen’s big,” Sean remarks.

“Twice the size of my old room,” Darwin adds.

Charles walks into the kitchen at that moment and greets his students. “I hope everyone slept well.”

A murmur of agreement rises up to meet him. The students, engrossed with themselves and the prospect of having everyone back together, smile and joke with one another. Hank begins fixing a cup of coffee.

The household eats soon after the last batch of eggs is finished: Ororo remains on her perch on the countertop, licking sticky syrup from her fingers, looking over Alex, Raven, Darwin, Hank, and Charles, who sit at the table. Sean hops up onto the counter next to Ororo, wedging himself between Ororo and Angel.

Even without the clatter of silver and crackling oil, the kitchen is noisy. Individual conversations have broken out, as Angel and Ororo tease Sean, as Alex and Raven tell their tale of Nicaragua to Darwin, as Hank leans over the table to ask the professor to pass the salt.

“What’s on your mind, Hank?” Charles asks, sipping at his coffee.

“It’s nothing,” Hank lies.

Charles frowns. “I think it’s rather not.”

“Well,” Hank looks down at his cinnamon bun, which is drowning in agave nectar, “I didn’t want to bring it up before you left, because I knew you were rushed, trying to get down there before – ”

“Yes, yes,” Charles nods.

Hank stabs his cinnamon bun. “Do you remember the girl we were monitoring? The one who lives in Connecticut. Well, she’s moving soon, and so I was wondering – ”

“Of course, Hank, I’ll drive out to fetch her as soon as we finish breakfast.”

“I know it was a long trip. If you don’t want to go, it’s fine.”

“Oh no,” Charles waves a hand dismissively, “I’d like to get out and speak with her. I’ll get Erik. Finish your breakfast.”

Charles leaves the clamoring of the kitchen behind and is halfway up the stairs when he realizes that he hasn’t even asked Erik; he doesn’t know if Erik will come. He freezes there for a moment, shocked by the automatic actions that his body has chosen to take. Then, he feels a seductive pull on his watch, on the buckle of his belt. Against his instinct, Charles continues up the stairs.

In his room, Erik waits, lying supine on his bed, on top of the sheets, completely dressed. He stares up into the ceiling and remembers being in this exact position the morning of the Cuban missile crisis.

He felt Charles halt halfway up the stairs and meant to tug on his watch in question.

There comes a rapping at Erik’s door. The doorknob twists open of its own accord.

“Erik?” Charles asks, as he steps into the room. The door swings shut behind him.

Erik sits up. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Charles says. “I was just – Hank’s found a mutant, that is, one not here. Obviously. She – the mutant – she’s in Connecticut, and I was going to drive out and get her. If she decides to come,” Charles finishes lamely.

“Right.”

“Well, I just,” Charles clears his throat. “Just wanted to let you know.”

“Thank you,” Erik says dryly.

“Right,” Charles says faintly, and reaches for the door. The knob sticks and the door refuses to open. “Well,” Charles turns around again, emboldened, “Actually, I came to ask if you’d like – and you’ve every right to say no – ”

Erik stands up and the door clicks open. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

Charles exhales loudly and follows Erik downstairs.

Hank, only slightly out of breath from sprinting down to the basement and then up to the kitchen, stands in the dining room of the mansion, copying down a set of coordinates hastily. On the varnished wood of the dining room table stretches a map of New York and the surrounding states. Hank traces a route from Westchester County to Connecticut with a black pen.

“Hank?” Charles calls, entering the room. “Do you have – ”

“All done, professor. Alex packed up the car, it should be ready to go in the garage.”

“Wonderful, thank you.”

Erik strides by the kitchen, the material of his leather sleeves brushing noiselessly against his belt, ignoring the commotion there. A few eyes watch him walk past, into the dining room.

“So he’s back then?” Angel turns to ask Alex, who shrugs.

Darwin makes a contemplative noise.

In the next room over, Hank and Charles examine the map. “So we’ll take 95 up to Norwalk, then?”

Hank nods in agreement. “Should be quick. No more than a two-hour trip there and back.”

“Excellent. Keep the rest of them in line while Erik and I are gone, will you?”

“Of course.”

With a furled map in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other, Erik Lehnsherr follows Charles Xavier down the gravel driveway of the mansion and into the garage.

“I’ll drive,” Charles says, climbing into the driver’s seat without waiting for a response. The car door shuts with a slam.

“Sure,” Erik says to the wind.

They take I-287 East down to interstate 95, and then from there they drive into Connecticut. The engine hums smoothly as Charles guides it from one road to the next, his eyes fixed on the road.

The car reaches Norwalk, Connecticut and Charles, with guidance from Erik, who deciphers the map Hank had marked out for them, directs the car towards the address printed in blocky handwriting on a scrap piece of paper.

“Leah Tran,” Erik says. He reads off the accompanying address and gravel crunches underneath the fat tires of their car as they pull into an empty driveway. “She’s home?”

“Yes,” Charles says, “Come on.”

They walk up to a front porch. Charles raps on the door twice.

“Her mutation?” Erik asks.

“You couldn’t have asked me in the car?”

“You seemed pretty concentrated on driving and I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Christ, Erik, I’ve only been driving for fifteen years.”

The door swings open just as Charles pushes an image of a girl pushing a finger through the emerald gem of her necklace into Erik’s mind. _She can rearrange crystal structures_ , Charles supplies, then withdraws from Erik’s mind before the other man can chastise him for intruding.

“Hello, Mr. Tran,” Charles says, “My name is Charles Xavier and I’d like to talk to you and your daughter – ”

“The sign says no solicitors,” the man says tiredly, “We’ve already got everything we want.”

“ – about her powers.”

The man blinks at them. “Her – ”

“Powers,” Erik confirms.

The man looks past them for a moment, at the road and then at the neighbor’s houses, before fully opening the door.

“She has the ability to rearrange crystalline structures,” Charles says, from where he sits on the couch next to Erik, across from Emily and her father. “Have you recently purchased any kind of jewelry? Emerald or quartz, perhaps?”

“Her mother,” Tran glances at his daughter, “Likes that kind of stuff. She’s been collecting jewelry like that for a long time, but – ”

“Emily couldn’t manipulate it until recently?” Erik finishes.

“These mutations,” Charles explains, “Usually manifest at puberty. They’re often triggered by emotional stress.”

“What does that mean?” Emily interjects. She wears a quartz pendant around her neck. She tugs at it nervously, and the structures of the crystal are warm under her touch. “I don’t understand why – ”

“My school,” Charles explains, “Is located in Westchester, New York, just a half-hour drive from here. There, you’d be able to learn how to control your powers – ”

“There are others?” her father interrupts.

“Many,” Charles says, and Erik lifts the radio that sits on the coffee table between them.

“I don’t,” Emily says, quietly, “I don’t want to have to leave.”

“It’s the same as going to school, Emily,” Charles begins.

“But she’s safe here,” the father says, concerned. “She’s safe here, I don’t understand why she has to go. She’s not – she’s not hurting anyone.”

“I understand,” Charles placates, “And I assure you that the school is a perfectly safe environment for students to learn and to – ”

“I just want her to be safe,” Tran emphasizes, his eyebrows knotting in worry, “Why can’t she stay here?”

“The school is safe,” Erik breaks in, his hand tapping on his knee impatiently.

“But – ”

“I assure you, Emily,” Charles leans in then, looking at the young mutant, “You will be safe there and you will be able to visit your family as often as you like.”

“How do we know?” asks the father, “How do I know that your – your school is safe?”

“Mr. Tran – ”

“I think,” the man looks at his daughter, and then back at Charles, “I think it would be best for Emily to stay here.”

Erik shifts slightly, about to speak, when Charles quells him with a subtle touch to his arm.

“We understand,” Charles says tightly. “I’ll leave a business card with you in case you change your mind.”

“Sure,” Tran says. His daughter tugs at her necklace and watches the two strange men leave.

“You didn’t fight,” Erik says, as soon as they collapse into the car and start the drive back. “You could’ve convinced them – ”

“Yes,” Charles snaps, holding the steering wheel tightly, “I know that.”

“With more time, I’m sure Emily would’ve – ”

“ _Erik_ – ”

“What happened?” Erik ignores Charles’ attempts to speak. “Why didn’t we stay longer? We couldn’t have spent more than ten minutes in there.”

“He wants his daughter to be safe,” Charles manages to speak through gritted teeth.

“The school is – ” Erik breaks off.

They drive back to Westchester, a tense silence curling throughout the car. Charles focuses determinedly on driving while Erik watches the world blur outside of the passenger seat window.

They’re about a two-minute drive from the main entrance of the Xavier mansion when Charles stomps on the brakes suddenly. At the same time, Erik straightens up in his seat.

“There’s someone – ” Charles doesn’t finish his sentence.

After a brief pause, Erik says, “Let me drive.”

“No,” Charles says firmly.

“Let me – ”

“Erik,” Charles says tightly.

They drive up to the large stone walls that enclose the mansion, up the gravel driveway before stopping in front of the iron gates of Westchester mansion. The metal skeleton of the automobile trembles in warning. Charles rolls his window down while simultaneously sending a telepathic message to Hank, telling him and the rest of the students to stay inside.

“Gentlemen,” Charles says with practiced ease, addressing the two agents in field uniforms. “What can I do for you?”

“Hello, professor,” the short agent leans down to speak into the open window of the car. “We’d like to ask you to take a trip with us. Come to our facilities. My boss wants to speak with you.” The agent jerks his head back at the black SUV with the letters CIA painted on it.

“And who would that be?” Charles asks.

“Oh, you know,” the man answers vaguely.

“Professor Xavier,” the other agent speaks, “We need you and your companion to exit your vehicle.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Well,” the taller agent shifts slightly, revealing a strange, white gun strapped to his belt, “We’ll have to take you two gentlemen in the hard way.”

“Really,” Charles says mildly, although the tightening of his knuckles on the steering wheel belies his anger. At the same time, Charles pushes a thought over to Erik. “You’re confident enough in your abilities to say that?”

“We need you to exit the vehicle, Xavier,” the shorter agent says.

“What, no professor this time?”

“Now,” the taller agent emphasizes, and in the same moment that the agent reaches for his belt, Charles says, “Erik.”

The metal hubcaps of their car suddenly rip free, slamming against the holsters of both CIA agents, propelling them backwards until their backs hit the wall of the main gate that encloses the Xavier mansion.

The passenger seat door is thrown open as Erik rushes out of the vehicle. The metal bumpers of the car fly out, through the air and pinning around the agents’ wrists and ankles, effectively immobilizing them.

Charles steps out of the car and slams the door shut behind him; he paces over to where the two agents are pinned up against the wall like paintings. His muscles tighten with anger as he steps up to the shorter man.

“Professor,” the agent gurgles. A stray piece of thick wiring from the antenna of the car presses against the agent’s thick neck.

Charles ignores him. Two fingers, trembling with anger, reach up and press against the agent’s temple.

Underneath the sweaty skin there, Charles feels a telltale bump. The coil of metal vibrates faintly under Charles’ touch.

“Don’t,” Charles warns.

“I know,” Erik says tightly from behind him.

Charles presses his lips tightly together, gathering the threads of anger that have been coiling in his mind for the last twelve months, collecting the scraps of hurt and fear and compressing them together. Charles concentrates for a long moment, and then he _pushes_.

A terrible sound fills the air, a sound of horror liquified, high and inhuman, something from a pain not of this world, rips out of the agent’s throat as his jaw practically unhinges.

Erik watches as Charles’ face pinches with concentration; in his own chest, Erik can feel the reverberations of that horrible scream, echoing with a similar shriek that’s been buried deep, deep within Erik’s own chest. With great difficulty, Erik gathers his mental wards around himself – thinks of stone barricades and metal doors shutting – until he is certain Charles will not be able to read his mind.

Two trembling fingers drop from the agent’s temple; Charles stumbles back and suddenly all noise dies, dissipating into the air as both of the agents’ eyes dull, all signs of life bleeding out of them.

“Charles,” Erik calls, his voice tense, as he steps forward, his powers clenching the metal of Charles’ watch, the metal of his belt, supporting Charles before he can completely collapse onto the floor. “Christ,” Erik breathes, wrapping an arm around Charles’ waist, pulling him upright.

Metal clatters onto the floor; the bodies of the agents fall onto the ground in a crumpled heap. Erik does not care.

With a soft grunt, Charles clenches the buttery leather covering Erik’s shoulder. “I think you can drive, now.”

Erik swears under his breath and all but hoists Charles into the passenger seat. Erik climbs into the driver’s seat; the iron gates in front of them shudder and then creak open, and Erik drives through smoothly.

“Charles,” Erik reaches over, not bothering to look at the road as he shakes the man in the passenger seat. “Charles.”

“‘M fine,” Charles slurs, eyes half-lidded.

Erik swears again and, as they reach the garage of the mansion, swings open his door, rushing around the car to help Charles out.

“I didn’t,” Charles says faintly, his voice small even though his lips all but press against Erik’s ear. Charles’ head lolls and his feet trip. “I didn’t mean to – ”

Erik tightens his grip on Charles. The front door to the mansion flies open and the two of them stagger inside.

“Professor?” Hank calls worriedly, hurrying up the basement stairs.

Erik and Charles make their way past the open kitchen door.

“What happened?” Sean demands, jogging around the kitchen table to push his shoulder underneath Charles’ arm. “I thought you were going to recruit!”

“We did,” Erik growls, “But the CIA was waiting for us outside.”

“Erik,” Charles says faintly, “Bring me to the living room.”

“But – ”

“The living room,” Charles repeats, slightly louder this time. Charles’ head throbs at the prospect of climbing up stairs, which he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do without having Erik float or carry him to his room; both of those options make Charles want to hurl.

“Charles,” Raven exclaims when they reach the sitting room, “What happened?”

Charles groans lowly.

“Quiet,” Erik rumbles, setting Charles down on the couch.

“What happened?” Angel frowns from where she stands by the window.

“Where’s Ororo?” Alex asks, stepping into the living room as well, “I can’t find – ”

“She’s fine,” Sean waves a dismissive hand, “She’s sleeping.”

Darwin quietly enters the room as well. “What’s going on?” he asks Alex quietly.

“Everyone sit down,” Hank says suddenly, from where he presses a furry hand to Charles’ forehead.

Everyone obeys, including Erik, who situates himself right next to Charles.

“Get the folder,” Charles tells Erik, “They want to know.”

Erik waves a hand and a thick manila folder floats into the room, held aloft by the metal clip that clasps it shut.

“So,” Sean starts quietly, folding his hands in his lap, “Erik sent this to us a few weeks ago.”

“It’s information,” Alex picks up, speaking to Darwin, “There’s an antimutant group out there; they’re collecting information on us and they,” he shakes his head.

“They want to take us in,” Erik says, but his gaze remains on Charles, who stares blearily in front of him. “They want to control us.”

“I don’t know if it’s – ” Hank starts.

“The point is,” Raven interjects, “They’re not nice. We don’t know what they want to do with us – ”

Erik growls lowly at that.

“ – but they’ve made a deal of sorts, or at least, they’ve warned the CIA – ”

“Who have sent agents here,” Darwin finishes.

Angel taps the floating folder from the air. It hesitates for a moment, then flies into her hands. She flips through it quickly.

“They don’t know,” Erik starts, then nods at the folder, “They don’t know that there are mutants here.”

Raven frowns. “What do you mean? I thought – ”

The sound of rustling papers stops. “No,” Angel says, skimming through the files, “They know our mutations, but, other than Charles, they don’t know where we are.”

“If they knew,” Alex starts. “If they knew we were here – ”

“There’d be more than two agents with plastic guns waiting for us,” Erik bites out. “Now it’s not their priority. If they knew how many mutants lived here, they’d double their attempts to get in. they’d send more than two agents only half-prepared.”

“So,” Hank says, “They’re only here for Charles? Why – ”

“It doesn’t matter,” Charles gets out, sitting up slightly straighter. His elbows brush against Erik’s arm. Neither man moves away. “What matters is that the school stays safe. I can’t,” Charles looks away from the eyes of his students, “I can’t have that risk.”

“What do we do then?” Raven asks.

Charles looks at her.

“It’s been a long day,” Erik says. “Don’t you all have studies?”

Obviously dismissed, the students, although still obviously curious, file away, out of the room, save for Sean, who lingers behind. Angel places the folder next to Erik on the couch. Raven presses her mouth against the crown of Charles’ head before leaving.

“I’m going to get rid of the bodies,” Erik says, and as he walks out, and Sean wonders how Erik can say that with a straight face.

“Alright?” Sean grabs a chair and plants it in front of the couch before plopping down. He brushes his floppy hair out of his face.

“Fine,” Charles says lowly. He rubs his temple. “I haven’t had much telepathic exercise for a while, besides Cerebro.” Charles frowns. “Which hardly requires any energy on my part anymore, now that its range has been reduced.”

“No, I mean, are you alright? After Nicaragua?”

Curious, Charles asks, “What could’ve happened there?”

“I mean,” Sean rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “You came back with Erik?”

Charles blinks twice. “He’s not staying.”

Sean barks out a laugh. “No offense to him, but I don’t really care if he stays or not. I just – ” Sean shakes his head, chuckling.

“Before,” Charles says carefully, “I told Erik that violence wasn’t the answer.” Charles leans forward slightly. “I told him that killing Shaw wouldn’t bring him peace.”

“Did it?”

A smile tugs at the corner of Charles’ mouth, but it isn’t a friendly one. “Does it matter? He’s found another group to pursue, another cause to take down.”

“Will he – he will he kill them?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that I said – I told you all that violence wasn’t the answer.” Charles licks his lips. “And now I’ve killed two men.”

“If,” Sean says slowly, “If you let Erik go on his own, he’ll probably end up doing more harm than good. I think – I think you know that, professor.”

Charles looks at his hands.

“But, if you go, I think you can convince him.”

“What, convince him not to kill them? How else would we stop them?”

“You’d find a way.” Sean says confidently. “And, I don’t think it would take much either,” he confesses, “I don’t know, professor, but – ” He breaks off. “Never mind, I don’t know.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, Erik came back, didn’t he? He came back to the mansion and, well, he didn’t kill the agents.”

“I did.” Charles rubs his thumb against his palm. “I’ve told Raven and I’ve told Angel, Sean. As much as I’d like for Erik to – to stay, he believes that the differences between our ideologies are… are too great. And, in fact, I’m still unsure of whether or not I agree with the statement.” Charles sighs. “The point is, I’d like for him to stay, but I don’t want to always be trying to stop him from leaving.”

“But you won’t,” Sean says. “You won’t stop trying.”

“It seems that way, doesn’t it?” Charles smiles ruefully.

“Well,” Sean says, “I just wanted to check on you. I should probably go help them with dinner now.” He gets up and but, instead of the kitchen, he heads to the library.

“Thank you, Sean,” Charles remembers belatedly.

Charles sits alone in the living room for a long while, lost in his thoughts.

“Are you feeling better?” Erik interrupts his thoughts, as the man reenters the room.

Charles watches Erik walk over and sit next to him on the couch.

“I killed them,” Charles says lowly, his gaze unfocused. His head still aches slightly.

“How?” Erik asks, without sympathy.

“I didn’t mean to – not at first, I just, I could feel them. I couldn’t get into their heads, but I knew they were their.” Charles exhales and shifts in his seat. “The coils they were weak. Not like the ones Jimena had.”

“You broke through them.”

“I was angry. I didn’t – I can’t have them here, Erik, you know – ”

“I know.”

Charles huffs. “At first, I tried to get their memories. I wanted to know – but, the metal.” Charles breaks off.

“You killed them,” Erik says.

“I didn’t want to,” Charles spits out, sitting up. His skull throbs as he does so, and he winces.

Erik is still for a moment. And then, he asks, “Why?”

Charles’ spine is tight. “I have to protect the students. When I brought them here, all of them, I told them that I would – that this would be a _safe_ place.”

“It is a safe place.”

“I have to keep it that way, don’t you see?”

Erik says, “I’m not asking you to justify your actions.”

Charles leans back in his seat.

“We were lucky,” Erik says. He traces the outline of a plastic gun in his pocket.

“They knew,” Charles frowns. “None of them were wearing metal and they have – ”

Erik reaches into the pocket of his leather jacket. He pulls out a crumpled paper and flattens it on his knee. There’s a blurry photo of himself, wearing a helmet on a Cuban beach. He reads and translates at the same time. “Information,” he reads. “Name – unknown. Current location – unknown. Height, weight, age – unknown. Ability – the manipulation and control of metal.”

“They saw you on the beach.”

“They saw my powers. They don’t know who I am.”

Charles exhales. And then he repeats, to himself, “I have to keep them safe.”

“Charles – ”

“Don’t you understand, my friend? I _killed_ them.”

“You had no other choice – ”

“There is always a choice.” Charles looks away. “I’ve taught my students and I’ve told myself, this whole time, no killing. And now,” Charles breaks off and laughs without humor. “Now I’ve done it.”

“It’s us or it’s them.”

“Do you feel vindicated now, Erik?”

“It’s not about that.”

“Hasn’t it always been about that? You’ve always told me I couldn’t trust the humans, and now you’re right.”

“I wish I weren’t.”

They both fall silent.

“The children,” Charles says finally, “They’re in the library now. Discussing Nicaragua.”

“They’re not children, you know.”

“I thought,” Charles ignores Erik’s comment, “This morning, when I woke up and I saw them all at breakfast, I thought things were finally – ” he pauses, then starts over. “Darwin came back, you came back, and I thought – ”

“You need rest,” Erik interrupts. “You’re not thinking straight.”

“I am,” Charles says hotly, his eyes dark, “And I think I should’ve – that night – ”

“You don’t have to say it, Charles.” Erik stands and makes a move to help Charles up.

“Erik,” Charles says, and he stands without Erik’s help.

“My God, Charles. You of all people know that I don’t like to dwell on the past.”

“And I do,” Charles says roughly.

“Fine,” Erik bites out. “So what? You want to talk about it? What will it change? It won’t change the fact that I left – ”

“You thought I wanted you gone!”

“Did you?”

“Of course not, how could you think that?”

“There’s no point talking about this, Charles.”

“It may not matter to you, but it matters to me, my friend.”

“We have our differences, you and I, you said so yourself.”

“You came back with us, Erik, doesn’t that mean something?”

“You told me – ”

“He did, alright? Hank did want you to come back, but you didn’t have to, no one forced you – ”

“And what? I came back, but they’re,” Erik gestures upwards, towards the students upstairs, “They don’t think of me the same way.”

“They will forgive you,” Charles starts.

“How can they?” Erik asks. “How can they forgive me when you haven’t even done so yourself?”

“I – ” Charles breaks off.

“I thought so.”

“Erik.”

“It doesn’t matter, alright? It doesn’t matter that I came back, it doesn’t matter that you killed someone, it doesn’t change anything.”

“But it does,” Charles sways forward suddenly, and Erik catches onto his forearms. “The world isn’t divided so neatly, into peace and violence – ”

“Stop,” Erik growls, “Stop, don’t do that, Charles. You chose your path, and I chose mine.”

“What’s this then?”

“It’s a simple coincidence, that we’re here. I’ll leave in two days, and life will be back the way it was before.”

“But it won’t be,” Charles hisses, “The humans will come closer and closer – ”

“What will you do then, if not kill them?”

“I don’t know!” Charles explodes. “But – no, listen to me, Erik – but they’re only here for me, right now. Alright? They’re only here for me, so if I leave – ”

“You want to come with me. To Mexico.”

“I – well, yes. For the sake of – ”

“The school,” Erik finishes. “But that’ll only be a temporary fix. You can’t stay away forever. You know as well as I do that the CIA won’t stop at a minor set-back – ”

“I don’t know,” Charles grits out, stepping close to Erik. “I don’t know, Erik, but I want to fix,” he breaks off, then gestures helplessly between them, “I want to fix _this_ , Erik.”

Erik exhales unsteadily.

“You won’t let me try?”

“You’ve had a year, Charles.”

“I know,” Charles says, his bottom lip trembling, “I know, alright, and I – I am sorry, my friend.” Charles breathes shallowly. “But, we’re changing. The both of us, whether you think so or not. And I – I want to make things right, Erik.”

“I think it’s too late for that,” Erik says quietly.

“I don’t think,” Charles straightens, “I don’t think you believe that.”

“You’re not well, Charles.”

Charles grits his teeth. “Alright, fine. Forget that I said that, but let me come to Mexico with you.”

“Charles.”

“You asked me to come with you – ”

“I didn’t think – ”

“ – don’t tell me you’re rescinding your offer now.”

Erik looks at Charles.

“Can you hand me the phone?” Charles asks.

From its place on top of a nearby desk, a telephone floats into the air, and then over to Charles.

Charles dials a number quickly, without looking at Erik. “Hello? Yes, I’d like to book a flight.”

Erik watches Charles, feeling the wire of the telephone humming, most likely transmitting the call directly towards the CIA.

“Acapulco, please,” Charles says, and he places an order for a one way ticket to Mexico in two days.

Fifteen minutes later, he hangs up. “Well.”

“And me?” Erik raises an eyebrow.

“You’re going to the airport directly, of course. Before I am. You’ll talk to the travel agent and book a flight.”

“Of course,” Erik says, almost amusedly.

“Come on,” Charles claps Erik on the shoulder. “We should start dinner.”

 

* * *

  

After dinner – which is an awkward affair, with Erik grabbing a plate and disappearing into Charles’ study where he’d set up his map and Raven determinedly following him while the others watched Charles struggle internally as to whether or not he should join them, which he didn’t – Alex and Sean head into the enormous living room to congregate around the television. They will later be joined by Darwin, who cheerfully drags Charles along with him, and they will later start a Battleship competition. Angel and Ororo eventually make their way to the living room to watch as well, although they’re more preoccupied with the snow falling on the competitors than Battleship itself. Upstairs, Erik and Raven have invaded Charles’ study. In the basement, Hank prods a few wires and then leaps back when sparks fly out.

“How long were you in Nicaragua for?” Raven asks, as she runs her hand over the worn but perfectly polished edge of Charles’ desk. Erik sits in a cushioned armchair, sipping from a thick glass cup.

He swirls his glass thoughtfully before answer. “After Cuba – three weeks. Before that, I’d stayed for a few days.”

“Before – ”

“Before I met you,” Erik corrects. “I stayed there before flying down to Brazil.”

On Charles’ desk sits their dirty utensils that sit on empty plates, which have been scraped clean. When Erik leaves, he will bring the dishes downstairs and drop them into a soapy sink.

“Do you like it?” Raven asks Erik, although she doesn’t look at him. “Traveling?”

“I didn’t have time to relish it,” Erik answers. “But,” Erik turns to look at her, “There’s something about traveling anonymously. It’s like – ”

“Starting over?”

“Something like that.”

Erik drinks, the alcohol slipping down his throat. Raven’s agile limbs allow her to perch on the corner of the mahogany desk. She rubs the hem of her skirt with a blue finger. “Do you miss it?”

There’s a clink as Erik sets his thick tumbler onto the desk. Liquid glugs out of the bottle as he pours himself some more.

“No,” Erik says. “Not at all.”

“Three countries in the last three months.” Raven tugs on her skirt.

“I had to. And it’s hardly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I hadn’t been to anywhere other than New York and Oxford before this.”

Erik sips as he asks, “And how’d you feel about it? Nicaragua?”

Raven sits up a bit as he turns to look at her. “I felt – like I was taking a lot – taking my life here for granted.” The corner of her mouth turns downwards. “It felt…unfair that I had all of this. And I’m still complaining sometimes.” She looks sheepish.

“That’s the way life is,” Erik says. “You may pity them, but somewhere, someone is pitying you. The rich man pities the poor. And then the poor man pities the rich, because the poor man thinks he has things the rich man can never know.”

“And then nobody's happy,” Raven frowns.

“I’m not looking to be happy,” Erik smiles wryly.

“Why?”

“I don’t think I’m meant for that.”

“What about me?” Raven challenges. She knocks her heel on the desk when Erik doesn’t answer.

“You can choose, Raven.” He finishes his drink and then rises. With one hand still holding onto the glass, he takes the plates.

“I’m going to bring these downstairs,” Erik says. Raven watches him go.

After placing the plates and glass into the sink, Erik slinks around the sitting room, avoiding the yells of Sean and Alex – the former because he makes a particularly accurate guess as to where Darwin’s battleship is and the latter because a small pile of snow falls on him – and the giggles of Ororo.

Erik continues down the main hallway, past the main foyer into the opposite wing of the mansion. He navigates the enormous mansion with ease, following the throb of metal that hunkers beneath the earth, beneath the mansion, like a dragon slumbering in a cage.

Following this metal, Erik finds himself descending the stairs that lead below the ground floor, into the basement.

The air is significantly cooler here; there is metal all around: metal from Hank’s lab materials and Cerebro as well as the metal buried even further below.

Erik pushes on the door that leads to the room that houses Cerebro to alert Hank before he steps in.

“Thank you,” Hank says. The furry outline of his back is easily distinguishable in a sea composed of shiny experiment tables, heaps of equipment, and Cerebro.

As his eyes wander over the thin wires of Cerebro and the equipment that’s obviously been tinkered with, Erik says, “I haven’t fixed anything yet.”

“I figured I’d say thank you now so that when you suddenly leave in the middle of fixing Cerebro I wouldn’t have to call it after you.”

“And why would I suddenly leave?”

“I don’t know,” Hank says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for a year, now.”

Erik looks at him.

“So,” Hank continues, purposefully ignoring Erik’s gaze, “We’ll start with Alex’s suit first, then work our way up to Cerebro.”

Hank wastes no time: he drops Alex’s G-suit onto a table and points with one claw, directing Erik to reshape the circular disk that’s been attached to the chest. They work efficiently and they work silently, save for Hank’s instructions to Erik. When finished with Alex’s suit, Erik looks curiously at the thin wires used with Cerebro, so different from the ones used at the CIA compound with the noticeably larger Cerebro there, but Hank does not answer his unasked question.

The wires are delicate even for Erik’s powers; his face darkens in concentration as he focuses on changing their structures – the entire length of the wire, that is, all at once, at Hank’s insistence.

Cerebro’s wires, which extend along the floor like forest vines and even halfway up the walls in some parts in the room, grumble in protest for a moment, shaking with irritation, before straightening out with a sigh.

Erik’s hands drop to his side. “Satisfied?” he rasps.

“The coils,” Hank looks up from his clipboard, “How do they work, exactly? Alex tried to explain, but.”

“They’re made of the same material as Shaw’s helmet.”

“Which is?”

“It’s an alloy,” Erik says stiffly. His pinky finger twitches and Moira’s bullet shudders in his pocket.

When Hank speaks, his voice is free from harshness for the first time since Erik stepped into the basement. Instead, he says, interestedly, “Can you remember what it was made out of? The specific metals? And the ratios, too, if you can manage?”

There is a pause.

Then Erik moves towards the least cluttered lab bench, swiping a loose sheet of paper and a pen, scribbling out a list of elements.

“You’re sure that’s all of them?” Hank says a few minutes later, when Erik straightens and hands him the paper.

“No,” Erik says. He tosses the pen back onto the lab bench and it lands exactly where it lay a few minutes ago.

“Still,” Hank mumbles to himself. “That’s slightly worrying.”

“How so?” Erik demands anyway, looking up sharply.

“The coils,” Hank says, “They’re designed to stop telepathic waves, correct?”

Erik nods curtly.

“So they must know how to detect telepathic waves.” Hank bites on his bottom lip to stop himself from continuing, but Erik guesses the rest of his sentence anyway.

“You’re worried they’ll be able to detect it when Charles uses his power.”

“It’s – it’s most likely impossible,” Hank says slowly. He isn’t sure of the potential himself but he does not want to share any of it with Erik.

“You’re sure,” Erik says.

“Yes, it’s impossible,” Hank snaps.

“Fine,” Erik says. “Are we finished here?”

Hank nods absentmindedly, already reading the paper Erik wrote on quickly.

“Good luck, Beast,” Erik says, and he turns and heads back up the stairs. He does not listen to hear whether or not Hank will say thank you.

Hank doesn’t.


	9. Nine

The windows of a mansion somewhere in Westchester County, New York, glow with warm, yellow light. Framed against this light are flickering shadows, silhouettes of girls and boys and beasts running through the mansion, long strings of Christmas lights trailing behind them. It is December 8th, 1963.

Their laughter can be heard from the gravel driveway, and their lights can be seen through the glass windows. With twinkling lights and sparkling tinsel and red ribbons, they decorate the mansion, running from the kitchen to the living room to the garden to hang up lights and colors.

Within a few hours, both the façade and the interior of the mansion twinkle merrily with Christmas decorations.

Inside the mansion, a man with a cardigan surveys the decorations. “You know,” he begins casually, “It’s only – ”

“It’s December, Charles,” explains a girl exasperatedly.

Ruefully, he grins. “I suppose.”

“Come on,” another boy says as he runs through the room, “Alex’s putting up the tree.”

“We have more than two weeks until Christmas,” Charles protests good-naturedly, but lets himself be dragged along by Raven.

While they disappear into the living room – where Alex and Hank drag in a rather impressive tree cultivated by Ororo – in the kitchen, Angel sits at the wooden table and swirls her cup of hot chocolate thoughtfully.

“So you can make them?” she asks.

Erik looks up from his black coffee. “Sufganiyot? Yes.”

“Can you teach me?” she asks, and Erik hesitates for a moment, because there should be more resistance than this; the students should be less inclined to forgive him than this. Granted, only Angel and Darwin are in the kitchen at this moment, two students who aren’t in the same situation as the rest, but regardless, Erik does not expect such congeniality from people he left.

“I want in,” Darwin agrees, sitting up.

“I don’t know if we have the ingredients,” Erik begins slowly. He stares down at his black coffee.

“We do,” Angel stands, draining the last of her hot chocolate. “What’s the first step, boss?”

This is how Erik Lehnsherr ends up baking sufganiyot, a traditional Hanukkah food, with Angel and Darwin.

The only reason he’d been in the kitchen was because he’d deliberately avoided lunch and dinner with the rest of the school and, subsequently, wanted a hot cup of coffee. Darwin and Angel had slipped in before he could sense them, and Angel had begun conversation abruptly about holiday food, which Erik couldn’t escape from.

Darwin and Angel watch Erik now, as the man reluctantly rolls up his sleeves, subtly uncomfortable as he begins mixing eggs, flour, and oil with milk and cinnamon. As Erik kneads the dough, he thinks of his mother and Hanukkah. This year it is in a few days. He hasn’t thought of Hanukkah in a while.

Angel asks questions all the while, flying from one side of Erik to the other, trying to watch him. Darwin sits on the counter and snacks on berries while he waits.

The smell of butter and warm yeast fills the kitchen; and warm air fills the mansion as Erik idly flicks on the heater with his powers.

In the living room, Charles and Sean watch Hank, Raven, and Alex struggle to push a Christmas tree in place.

“A little to the left,” Sean calls out.

“You’ve got to be joking,” grumbles Raven.

Hank mutters, “That’s what you said five minutes ago.”

Outside, cold wind whips against glass windows; but inside, the heater thrums and the inhabitants of the Westchester mansion settle in – some clustered around a bare tree in the living room and others in the warm kitchen baking pastries.

For the moment, it seems as though tempers have simmered down, enough for the students, Erik, and Charles to congregate in the kitchen for a moment, plucking sugar-dusted sufganiyot from a platter.

As soon as Sean drags Alex in, the two of them followed an enthusiastic Raven and a noticeably less-energetic Hank – which leads to Darwin leaping off the counter and clapping his friends eagerly on the back – Erik slips from the kitchen, withdrawing to the first-floor bathroom to wash the sugar from his hands. He resists the temptation to rub his hands on the material of his slacks. It has been twenty-four hours since he stood in Hank’s lab, helping him fix Cerebro.

Warm water rushes out, covering the calloused skin of Erik’s hands. He watches the water for a moment. Then the faucet creaks shut and Erik dries his hands. He leaves the bathroom and moves to head upstairs, towards his room.

He’s halfway up to the second floor when he feels the presence of small earrings and a delicate anklet. He pauses for a moment, the heel of his dress shoe hovering over a carpet-covered step, then resumes walking as though he hadn’t detected anything.

The delicate metal follows Erik, rustling behind him like little lights, and he stops at the second floor. He turns.

A little girl, with metal earrings and a delicate anklet, looks up at him. She holds a sufganiyah in her hands, warm white sugar dusted over her warm brown skin.

For a moment, the two of them look at each other.

“You didn’t have one,” Ororo speaks first, holding up her sufganiyah in offering.

Erik looks at her for a long while. “You keep that one,” he says finally.

The edges of her mouth curl up slightly.

Erik turns away and then climbs the stairs again. The smell of fried dough and sticky jam follows him like a cloud; the feel of metal follows him like blinking eyes.

They reach the third floor, Erik first, and then Ororo a few steps later. Erik almost starts to walk down the hallway, but instead he pauses. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Ororo,” Ororo says. She scampers up the stairs. “You’re Erik.”

“I am,” Erik says, and he turns and sinks to his knees, so as to look her in the eye. There are traces of red jam around her small mouth.

Erik reaches into his pocket, fingers closing around a piece of metal – Erik always carries metal on him – before pulling it. In the air, it morphs into a horse. Ororo watches the metal melt liquidly, from rough edges and smooth surfaces to a rippling mane and four hooves.

“A horse,” she says.

“That’s for you,” Erik says, and he carefully does not hand it to Ororo’s sticky grasp; he places the figurine into one of her pockets.

“Thank you, Mr. Erik,” she says. “Goodbye.” She flashes a quick smile at him before turning on her heels, her anklet catching the light, and running down the stairs. In her pocket, the horse melts into a cat.

Erik finishes the walk to his room. He pulls off his leather jacket and sits on a chair by the fireplace, summoning his briefcase from across the room. He allows himself one brief thought of desire – something strong to drink – before resolutely turning his thoughts away from that direction.

Downstairs, Angel and Darwin crowd around Alex, who holds up his hands in mock-surrender. “Okay, okay, fine,” he laughs, “I’ll make you pudding, just let me breathe!”

Raven finishes off the last of the powdery donuts while Hank cleans his glasses methodically. None of them notice when Charles slips out of the room.

Charles heads past the living room. Three paces past the living room, Charles pauses. He turns and ducks into the living room; he emerges with a bottle of cold bottle of whiskey.

He takes the stairs quickly, two at a time, until he reaches the third floor. He raps on the door in a gesture of formality – Charles correctly assumes that Erik’s been tracking the movement of his watch out of the kitchen and up the stairs – before twisting the knob and pushing the door open with his bicep.

Flames whisper contentedly in the fireplace. Erik sits in a cushioned armchair by the fire. A loud click fills the air as Erik snaps his briefcase shut. “We leave tomorrow morning,” he says briskly, “Should be there before the sun sets.”

“I know,” Charles says, “I remember.” He walks over to a matching armchair and pushes it close to the fire as well. Erik looks up at this, and then looks at the bottle in Charles’ grip. “Want a drink?” Charles sits.

“Reading my mind?”

“It wasn’t only you that wanted a drink,” Charles murmurs.

The briefcase falls onto the floor with a thump. Erik looks into the fire. Not for the first time, he wonders what it would be like to have the ability to control fire.

Erik looks back at Charles; at the same time, the metal bottlecap opens with a pop. Erik raises an eyebrow. “No glasses?”

“Thought we could share,” Charles says primly. He proceeds to take a long swing from the bottle.

After that, Erik reaches over with a long arm and takes the bottle from Charles, taking a long sip as well. For a while, for that night, the world lets them be just two men in the company of only themselves, no misery and no regret lurking behind them, ready to interrupt at any moment.

Half of the bottle is downed before either of them speaks again.

“If you don’t want me to come with you to Mexico,” Charles begins, staring at the carpet.

“I would tell you,” Erik rumbles.

Their chairs are close, only a little more than a foot of carpet between them. Due to their proximity to the fire, Erik’s skin begins to heat. He tugs up his sleeves, revealing the bones of his wrist; Charles’ eyes track the movement.

“Would you,” Charles asks, although he sounds more distracted than curious.

Erik leans forward for the bottle. The metal springs and the metal frame of his chair creak; his foot brushes against Charles’. When Erik sits back in his chair, there is less than a foot of space between them. “I would make it obvious that I wouldn’t want you to accompany me.”

The air, warm and sultry, curls around them. Charles’ cheeks flush in a cocktail of alcohol, heat, and desire. He leans forward in his seat, setting his elbows onto his knees. Charles says, “There are a lot of things about you that aren’t obvious, my friend.”

Erik, posture slouched, the blades of his shoulders firmly pressing against the back of his chair, looks at Charles. Then he leans forward. His eyes flash dangerously as he passes the bottle to Charles, their knees almost knocking. Then he leans back.

“Are you nervous?” Erik asks.

“Why would I be?”

“Your heartbeat’s accelerated since you entered my room.”

Charles, who has just moved the bottle up to his mouth, lips parted for a sip, raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Oh?” The cold ring of the bottle’s neck presses against his red mouth as he speaks. “You felt that?”

Charles drinks slowly before handing the bottle off. Then he crosses his legs and, in doing so, the curve of his ankle presses against the inside of Erik’s calf.

“I can feel the iron in your bloodstream,” Erik says. His fingers wrap around the neck of the bottle, which sweats condensation. “I can feel it beating in your heart.”

Charles’ eyebrow rises further.

“Your heart accelerated and I felt it.”

“That,” Charles grins, pointing an unsteady finger at the man who sits across from him, “Is bollocks. Does anyone actually believe you when you say that?”

“Really,” Erik says, “I can.”

“Iron is a trace element in people, Erik, I studied this at Oxford. I very much doubt you can feel it, even with your abilities.”

“I felt it,” Erik insists.

“Then what, pray tell, did it feel like?”

Erik sips languidly, stretching out his legs before replying. “A sudden rush of blood, like a wave, underneath your skin. In your veins.” Erik’s leg presses deliberately against Charles’. Two layers of fabric press against one another and, in addition to the close heat of the fire, their skin burns where they touch. Erik hands the bottle over.

Charles takes a sip. Then he laughs lowly as he rises, standing on his feet. He offers the glass bottle to Erik.

Erik takes it with one hand. At the same time, the metal of Charles’ belt tugs him down and Erik curls five strong fingers into the material of Charles’ shirt, right underneath his collar.

A quiet noise makes its way out of Charles’ throat as Erik drags him down.

There’s an inch of space between their mouths when Charles suddenly stops. “Erik, I – ”

“Don’t think,” Erik rumbles; his eyes latch onto the bottom swell of Charles’ lips and the metal of Charles’ belt shudders. “This doesn’t – ”

Charles surges forward. Erik’s back collides with the back of his chair and Charles places a knee on the bottom cushion of the seat, in the space between Erik’s thighs. Their mouths meet in a rush, in a messy kiss, lips slick with spit and alcohol.

The glass bottle clunks onto the floor, forgotten. Charles leans into the seat eagerly, his knee sliding forward until it nudges at the v of Erik’s legs. His tongue slides into Erik’s mouth with no intention other than feeling the wet heat of the other man’s mouth. Neither of them speaks for a long while, the sound of wet kissing louder than the crackle and pop of the fire: Erik drags a large hand down the curve of Charles’ spine as Charles presses his knee forward, nudging the bulge in Erik’s pants.

Then two hands, clammy with sweat and condensation of a cold bottle, flutter hastily down Erik’s chest, all but ripping at the buttons.

“Nervous?” Erik rasps, covering Charles’ thin hands with his own wide, tan ones, helping him undo the buttons of his shirt.

Charles runs two pale hands down the slopes of Erik’s chest, brushing over white scars and smooth skin. When Charles twists the skin near a nipple, Erik groans and tugs Charles closer.

“Tell me, Erik,” Charles leans in, his lips brushing against Erik’s cheek, “Where’s my blood rushing to now?”

Erik smiles with teeth. “I think you know I know.” Then a deep growl fills the air and the metals of the two men’s belts pull towards each other like magnets; Erik lunges forward and pushes both of them towards his bed.

They stumble drunkenly across the room and collapse in an ungainly heap on the soft mattress. Their belts undo themselves and their zippers slide down smoothly; the sound of clothes rustling on skin fills the room.

The fire still crackles lowly, its orange flames augmenting flickering shadows: the darkness beneath the curve of a hipbone, the swell of a rib, the line of a jaw. Crumpled clothes fall onto the floor like used tissues: a leather jacket, slacks, a soft cardigan.

“I wasn’t lying about the iron,” Erik rasps, and then his hips roll, the movement punctuated by a sharp gasp from Charles.

Charles’ teeth flash in the fire’s light. His heels dig into the mattress and he twines his fingers into Erik’s hair, pulling him down. “Are you sure about that?”

Erik huffs and presses his mouth against Charles’ neck, dragging his lips over the bumps of Charles’ sternum and chest. “To verify,” he growls lowly, and squeezes the flesh of Charles’ thighs, “I’ll have to gather empirical evidence.”

“Oh?” Charles laughs delightedly, squirming slightly when Erik slides lower; Erik nips the skin above Charles’ bellybutton. “To confirm your – _oh_ , God, Erik – ”

And Erik’s head dips below the pale expanse of Charles’ belly, causing the both of them to forget everything about anything other than just the two of them for a while.

 

* * *

 

Night comes to the Xavier mansion. The house is quiet. It is December 8th, 1963.

In a bedroom on the third floor, a man lies awake, staring at the ceiling. It is almost midnight.

For a few minutes, there is no movement save for the rise and fall of two chests – the man and the sleeping figure next to him. Then, at exactly midnight, the man who is awake blinks twice, rapidly. His lips press together. A few seconds pass and then the man rises suddenly but quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping person beside him.

He dresses with efficiency, as if he has been on the run, taking the stairs down to the ground floor of the mansion, striding across the foyer. The front door swings open without prompting and closes without a sound as the man walks out.

Underneath his shoes, the gravel driveway crunches.

“How did you know I was here?” the man demands, his face unreadable as he strides up to an oak tree towards the end of the driveway. There is another man waiting for him, except this man has red skin and a tail like a devil’s.

The first man strides up to the second without warning, metal snaking out of his pockets, into the air, forming ropes that push the second man back by the tail and by the throat until the back of his black suit pushes into the rough bark of the oak tree.

“Jimena told me you left,” the man says calmly, even though there is a silvery blade at his throat. “I assumed this was where you were.”

The metal drops and the first man steps back. He does not apologize.

“Dante says hello,” continues the man with the tail, oblivious to the metal that still wreathes around both of them.

“You went to her,” the first man says.

“Are you staying here?”

“We’re leaving,” the first man says slowly, “We’re flying out to Mexico tomorrow.”

“You’re following Palacios?”

The first man dips his head.

“I know someone there,” says the man with the red tail casually, “I’ll tell him you are coming.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, down that same gravel driveway, Alex Summers walks. It is December 9th, 1963.

He’s wearing a loose shirt and jeans today, with no intentions of leaving the mansion. Alex is a little tired – he’d stayed up late last night with Darwin and Sean, fixing the last of the Christmas decorations. It felt normal to him; it felt right to him to have everyone back – including Erik.

Alex walks to the garage, a place he often frequents. Despite the early hour, Erik is already there, peering into the hood of a car.

“What time do you leave?” Alex asks.

“Soon,” Erik taps a dented pipe and it straightens out. “An hour, at the latest.”

“I can drive,” Alex offers.

“Under different circumstances, I would appreciate it,” Erik says. “But I’d rather you stay here.”

“Right,” Alex says, and he takes one step back. Alex watches Erik for a moment. Then he asks, “Are you coming back?”

Erik feels a tendril of an unidentifiable emotion in his gut. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Charles wants you to stay,” Alex says, crossing his arms and looking at his foot. “And I – I want you to stay. And so does Raven and Angel and Darwin.”

“I don’t – ” Erik starts. He grips the sides of the car with his hands and tries not to crush the metal underneath his touch. He says haltingly, “I don’t know if things will work out. If I – if I stay.”

“Right,” Alex scuffs his foot on the floor. He doesn’t feel entitled to an opinion on whether or not Erik should stay.

Erik looks down at the metal pipes and caps and gears and wonders what it would be like to be able to interact with people in the same easy manner that he does with metal.

“Okay,” Alex says and he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll see you then.” He begins to head out of the garage when Erik calls after him, “You haven’t touched the bike.”

“I – what?”

“The motorcycle,” Erik nods towards the one propped up on the far wall, “You haven’t taken it out.”

Alex shrugs.

“Take it out once in awhile,” Erik says, ducking back underneath the hood. “Take it out for a ride on the grounds.”

Alex grins to himself because he knows Erik can’t see.

“See you, Erik,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.

In the mansion, one of Charles’ proteges approaches him in a similar fashion, albeit with more conversation.

“You have to be careful,” Hank announces without preamble as he walks into Charles’ study. Charles folds some of his paperwork together in case they come across anyone in border patrol with a metal coil in their temple.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to use my telepathy to get out of uncomfortable situations with the Mexican government,” Charles says, forcing himself to speak lightly even though he knows Hank does not refer to any government agent.

“Look,” Hank says, uncomfortably: he doesn’t want to have to say this, but as the oldest student at the Xavier’s School, he feels an obligation to. “Professor, we don’t know what he has in store – ”

“Even if he does have ulterior motives,” Charles says firmly, “Which I don’t believe he does, but if it becomes apparent that he does, I’m more than capable of handling any situation that arises.”

Hank fidgets. “I didn’t mean to – ”

“Hank,” Charles interrupts, “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Hank jerks his head in a nod.

“I do appreciate your concern,” Charles continues carefully, “And I will be vigilant.”

“Okay,” Hank says, although disbelievingly.

“What else is on your mind, Hank?”

Out of all of his students, Charles sometimes worries about Hank the most – Hank, who thinks of safety and stability while his friends think about sufganiyot; Hank, who spends time in the labs while the rest of them play monopoly. Charles assumes a less rigid posture at that and makes a mental note to try and spend more time with Hank when this is all over.

“I made you something,” Hank blurts out and Charles smiles.

Hank reaches into his coat and delicately pulls out a piece of polished metal, holding it with the pads of his fingers so his claws don’t touch. The metal, which is much thinner than the width of a pen but thicker than wire, curls organically, not unlike the edge of a French curve. “You hook it around the back of your ear,” he explains, “It’s meant to amplify your telepathic powers.”

Charles blinks.

“I talked to Erik about the coils,” Hank says, “And I used the same material that’s in Cerebro. It’s supposed to amplify your brain waves, and, hopefully, even when someone has coils in, you should be able to at least detect. And,” he continues, “If not, you can always try to use it to communicate with us. Mexico’s closer than Nicaragua.”

“I’ll remember that,” Charles grins at Hank. He takes the metal and slips it into the pocket of his cardigan. “Thank you, Hank.”

A few floors below them, Erik, satisfied with the condition of the car, heads back inside to grab his things. He finishes putting his papers into his leather briefcase and then slips on his leather jacket. As he heads down the stairs, he pauses on the second landing.

“Bye, Mr. Erik,” Ororo peeks her head around the doorway that leads into the stairwell.

“Goodbye,” he says. In her pocket, the dog figurine morphs into a snowflake. Ororo giggles in delight.

Erik makes his way down the stairs and is interrupted again as soon as he steps onto the ground floor.

“Not going to say bye?” Raven places a hand on her hip.

“Why would I when I know you would come to me?”

Raven scoffs. “God, Erik. Anyway.” She crosses her arms and leans against the doorframe. “Have fun in Mexico.”

“I’m surprised you’re not coming with us.”

“I can think of some things that could be done around here,” she says vaguely. “Take care of him.”

“He can take care of himself.” Erik readjusts his grip on his briefcase.

“Take care of him,” she repeats.

“And you, the school,” Erik dips his head in acquiescence.

“I’ll take care of the school,” Raven agrees. “God, can you imagine if someone like Hank were in charge? Charles tells him to take care of everything but he’s in the basement all the time.”

“I’m sure he has other redeeming leadership qualities.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she says.

Erik opens his mouth to speak just as Raven pushes off the doorframe. “Stay safe,” she says, and leans in to embrace him.

She turns away a moment after that and disappears up the stairs, having already said her goodbyes to Charles that morning. Erik goes and loads his things into the car.

Charles gathers his things as well, hefting his duffel bag over his shoulder and walking downstairs to say goodbye to the students, before heading out to the garage and climbing into the car.

“I didn’t know you still had the leather jacket,” Charles says mildly, as he enters the garage. It’s the first exchange the two men have exchanged since last night. Charles does not think of the way he woke to an empty bed. “I only ever saw you in jeans and those atrociously worn shirts in Nicaragua.”

“I kept them,” Erik says without emotion, although the corner of his mouth quirks upwards.

Charles huffs and climbs into the car next to Erik; they will leave the vehicles at the airport.

Charles starts his car first, the engine revving up before he reverses and then drives down the driveway, past the gates enclosing the grounds of the mansion. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hook of metal, then slips it over his ear.

With this enhancement, Charles feels the hum of two CIA agents following him, their engine peeling away as well, albeit much further away, tailing him to the airport. He sends a quick thought to Erik and then continues concentrating on the road.

Charles reaches the airport first, and then Erik fifteen minutes after. The two men meet again as they board the same airplane.

Erik places his things in an overhead bin. “Is this seat taken?”

“Took you long enough,” Charles mutters.

Erik slides into the seat next to Charles. “The agents?” he asks lowly.

“Stopped outside the terminal.”

Erik grunts and then sits back in his seat.

They settle in on the plane and the hum of the engine beneath them reminds Charles’ of a time when he’d sit in the passenger seat of a car as Erik drove, the engine rocking him quietly to sleep. Charles falls into a deep sleep within minutes.


	10. Ten

It is laundry day. A woman dumps a plastic container of dirty clothes into a washing machine and slams the lid shut. The machine starts with a rumble and water pours onto the clothes. It is December 10th, 1963.

The woman moves on to the next basket, tugging it close with a foot and then lifting the heavy load up into her arms easily. These clothes are warm and soft, just out of the dryer. She picks out the sheets of fabric softener and begins folding the clothes.

She reaches a gray material and folds the sleeves of the cardigan in, preparing to fold the entire thing in half when she feels something in the pocket. Curious, she reaches in and pulls out a plastic tag.

 

* * *

  

Sunlight peeks over the gray buildings of the Acapulco International Airport. Even this early in the morning, yellow cabs have begun to line up around the exit to the terminal, eager to pick up tourists. It is December 10th, 1963.

The international tourists’ season has begun: Acapulco’s dry season lasts from December to April, in the time that other places have colder, snowy weather, making the winter season the most popular season to visit.

At this time, however, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier are not tourists, despite the fact that they, like many other visitors to Acapulco this time of year, are American and are rich enough to purchase plane tickets.

Along with a throng of other tourists, the two men gather their things and shuffle off the plane.

The line of taxis waits for them and they head towards the nearest one. The driver helps them place their things in the trunk and then all three of them clamber back into the taxi.

“Acapulco?” the driver asks. He rolls a cigarette between his fingers and the skin of his arms are tan.

“Yes,” Charles says, “Although, could we wait here for a moment?”

The driver, who is used to only a yes from tourists, pauses.

Erik leans forward and taps a roll of bills onto the man’s shoulder. “Wait here,” he says, and then sits back. The driver places the bills into his front pocket and closes the partition.

“Palacios flew out late last night,” Erik says. He shuffles through his papers. “Supposed to arrive thirty minutes after us.”

“Erik,” Charles interrupts. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way.”

Erik looks up. “And what’s that?”

“No violence,” Charles says firmly, “We’re here to follow Palacios, find out where they kept Frost, and then see what we can do from there.”

“You believe that,” Erik says, not exactly asking.

Charles looks at him.

Erik nods once, curtly, then places his papers back into his pocket. He picks up his briefcase from where it sits between its feet and pops it open. He pulls out two metallic orbs and slips those into the pocket of his pants. He takes off his leather jacket and folds it into his briefcase, his arms bared in his white cotton shirt.

Charles, who has been looking out the window after Erik nodded, raps the glass separating themselves and the driver.

With a swish, the partition opens. “Acapulco?” the driver asks again.

“Yes,” Charles confirms.

At the same time, a few yards ahead of them, a man in a trim suit, overdressed for a tourist, carries an unusually thin suitcase and steps into a cab as well.

Charles discreetly places a hand to his temple to glean the location of Palacios’ hotel from his driver but does not interfere with his actions, choosing only to skim surface thoughts and conversations. “He’s staying at the Flamingo Hotel,” Charles relays to Erik in a low murmur, “Not flying out again until tomorrow morning. Seems as though he’s relaxed and,” he pauses, pressing his lips together, “Meeting up with a friend or two tonight.”

They reach the main strip of the city, which is half shrouded by the shadows of hotels and tall buildings on either side.

“Here,” Erik rumbles, pointing to a nondescript hotel on the left side of the road.

The taxi pulls over and helps them with their things; Charles overtips the driver and they carry their things inside.

Their hotel overlooks a strip of sand and the clear waters of Acapulco Bay. The hotel’s residents, mostly American, parade across the foyer in their beachwear and sunglasses.

“It’s the beginning of the season,” the hotel clerk apologizes, “We’ve only got a room – ”

“It’s fine,” Charles deposits a leaflet of bills onto the desk. “We’ll take it.”

They take their suitcases, one each, and their handheld bags up to the room, which is, like the hotel, small and gray and nondescript. There are two twin beds, a bathroom, and a view of the bay.

“We’re going to walk out in a moment,” Erik says, disappearing into the restroom.

“Alright,” Charles says, watching the bay. After a moment of thought, he peels off his cardigan and places it on the foot of his bed – the bed closest to the window and furthest from the door, the bed he always took on their road trip before.

Erik exits the bathroom and they walk back downstairs, into the foyer, and out onto the main street, which bustles with commotions and taxis and tourists.

“Where are we heading?” Charles asks, striding quickly to keep up with Erik’s pace.

“We have someone waiting for us,” Erik answers.

They walk down on the sidewalk, avoiding laughing tourists and street vendors alike. “Do we?” Charles asks mildly.

“He’s meeting us in an hour,” Erik says, “He should be a taxi driver.”

“Not the one – ”

“Not the one who drove us, no,” Erik says, “Someone else. We’ll go this way for now, towards the fort. From there, we’ll walk up the hill to the cliff divers.”

“Like the Elvis Presley movie,” Charles says.

“What?”

“There’s a film he’s in called _Fun in Acapulco_ – oh never mind.”

Erik huffs.

They walk down the busy road. To the left, beachgoers crowd together on the sand, close to the clear waters. There are stands offering fresh fish and advertising fishing competitions. Further out in the bay, white sailboats and yachts wait calmly under the sun, white dots on the blue horizon.

To the right, they pass the Fort of San Diego, walking underneath the bridge there that leads to the museum. On the sides of the road, old cars are parked by the sidewalk, pieces of thin cardboard on their windshields to block off the sun.

And to the right again, after the fort, there are shops lined up along the sidewalk, some of them still closed in the morning. Some of the buildings have begun to crumble, revealing rusty metal foundation grids. Regardless, the streets, which are sprinkled with colorful hotels, teem with shoppers and shops, the latter of which offer colorful clothes and souvenirs to the visitors that parade past.

They walk for a while, past these garishly colored attractions and up the road still. Charles pauses briefly to gape at the enormous sailfish, longer than his own height, that hangs from a metal contraption in front of the bay. “Deep sea fishing,” Charles reads the advertisement aloud. The man, obviously a tourist, who caught the sailfish stands in front of it, grinning for a camera. Erik tugs Charles along and they continue up the road, towards Las Playas –  the beaches – the furthest edge of the Acapulco Bay.

The beaches give way to cliffs; the road winds around the windworn, sunburnt faces of the jagged hillsides, leading them up until they look down on the Pacific Ocean and look up at white houses dotting the cliffs. There’s a quiet shop overlooking a narrow beach that is flanked by green and brown cliffs. They settle there. A few other tourists have walked this far as well, and they walk down to the significantly less crowded beach or into the few shops surrounding or continue up the cliff.

In English, Erik orders two beers and a plate of oysters.

Charles raises an eyebrow at Erik after the owner of the shop walks into the back to yell out their order. “You know we’re not on the CIA’s budget anymore, right?”

“No,” Erik shifts in his plastic seat to have a better view of the cliffs and the ocean. “We’re on yours.”

Charles scoffs. Then he comments quietly, “You spoke in English.” Charles knows that Erik is fluent in half a dozen languages, including Spanish.

“They treat you differently when you’re a tourist,” Erik replies. He looks at his watch and then back at the ocean.

“Hm.” Charles sits back in his seat.

A few minutes later, the cold beers and the fresh oysters come out, the latter of which are on the half shell and the both of which Charles enjoys very much.

“So we wait here,” Charles says, squeezing lemon onto his oysters.

Erik dips his head, his eyes focused on the single road that winds up from the bay to the cliffs. He sips at his beer without looking away.

They finish up and pay after that, heading out of the shop with their half-finished beers in hand.

Once again, the road hugs tight to the curves of the cliffs, winding and looping around before finally reaching a platform across from a promontory. Erik stops them here, his shoes scuffing the cement path as they walk up to the platform.

“Over there,” Erik jerks his head towards the promontory. On the highest point of the cliff, there are shrines dedicated to various saints. “Those are your cliff divers.”

From where they stand, the cliff divers are dark blots climbing out of the water and up the face of the cliff, scaling up the rocks with no ropes or any kind of gear.

Charles turns a bit and places his hands on the railing, watching the crowd beneath the cliff and the man on top of it. The cliff diver waves when he reaches the top of the cliff, his teammates not far behind.

At the same time, a taxi pulls up the winding road, parking on the opposite side of where Charles and Erik stand. A man exits the taxi, his eyes dark and beady as he crosses the road. Erik nods at him and the taxi man crosses the street quickly. Everyone in the vicinity watches the cliff divers and no one watches the taxi man interact with the two foreigners.

The taxi driver walks up to Erik, his gaze pointed.

“Hello,” Erik greets him.

The taxi driver grunts. He looks down and reaches into his pocket, pulling out three receipts for beer. When he hands them over, Charles peers over Erik’s shoulder, his eyes widening when he sees the green film that is between the man’s webbed fingers.

“A mutant then?” Charles looks up at the driver. Erik takes the papers and looks through them.

The driver looks at Charles with a beady gaze. The drive smiles slightly, the skin of his neck pulling up to reveal three dark slits on either side of his throat.

“Must be handy, living here,” Erik glances up. The driver drops his smile and looks at Erik stonily. “What’s the name?”

The driver pinches his fingers together and then opens them. He repeats the motion.

Erik pulls out a pen and hands it to him.

On the back of the receipts, next to an address, the driver scribbles out a name.

Satisfied, Erik nods. He slides the man a few bills from his pocket and says, “Keep the pen.”

The driver grins again and Charles grins back. The driver waves his hand and crosses the road, to his car. He gets into the taxi and drives off.

Behind them, the last of the cliff divers climbs onto the highest point of the promontory.

“Amazing,” Charles says, turning around to watch him. The cliff diver waves to the group of people who stand on a cliff next to the one he stands on. The cliff diver waits for the sea to swell and then leaps into the air, spinning downwards gracefully. He slips into the water with a small splash and the viewers – from the hotel and from the viewing area – applaud him loudly.

“Off we go,” Erik says. He glances at the papers and then shows them to Charles. They walk back down the road and towards the bay.

 

* * *

  

Back at the hotel, Erik claims the only desk in their room. He drops his briefcase onto the table and pulls out all of the papers from his pocket, spreading them across the surface of the desk. Interested, Charles looks on.

“Palacios is unloading at the hotel now,” Erik says. “He’ll probably have lunch somewhere in Las Playas and stay at the Flamingo for a while.”

Charles pulls a chair over to the desk. He picks up a faded photograph as he sits. “Is this the view from there?” he asks. The photo captures a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding cliffs.

“Mhm.” Erik picks up a beer receipt and flips it over. In ink, there is one word scribbled out messily: Esperanza. “Tonight, he’ll make his way down to the bay. Get on a yacht. According to the mutant’s papers, Palacios is a regular here. Palacios has a few friends that vacation in this area.”

“Speaking of which,” Charles draws his legs underneath his chair and crosses them at the ankles, “How did that mutant know to come and meet you?”

“Azazel,” Erik says curtly. He continues. “He doesn’t stay often; he usually flies out after a day or so. Our mutant is going to drive up there now and find out when Palacios is flying out.”

“And then we follow,” Charles agrees.

Through the open window, a sea breeze wafts in, carrying the sounds of the ocean waves as well as several dozen tourists already out on the sand. The smell of brine fills their room and the edges of their thin white curtain lifts. The sun peeks in through the open window.

Erik forces himself to think aloud. “The name of his yacht is Esperanza. We’ll go down to the bay this afternoon, walking around for a bit and find the ship.”

Charles nods but he’s thinking of the mutant with the webbed fingers and the metal hook in his suitcase.

Erik reaches for the plump grapefruit on his desk; he’d allowed himself one moment of indulgence and purchased it from a street vendor on the way back to the hotel. Now, with the polished ball of metal in his pocket, Erik fashions a knife of sorts, and peels the rind of the entire grapefruit. The smell of citrus mixes with seawater and sunshine.

With his elbow, Erik pushes his papers out of the way, clearing a spot for his desk. He peels the grapefruit with efficiency, the long rind curling into a ribbon under his blade. Charles watches as Erik picks off the pith with deft fingers, then pull apart the fruit into segments. Erik eats them one by one. Normally, Erik would eat the pith as well, but today he wants only the sweet pulp.

They share the grapefruit and watch the bay from where they sit in their room. When they finish, they clear the table and leave the room.

Down by the water, tourists lounge on the sand. Cabanas with thatched roofs and plastic umbrellas with bright stripes dot the shore. Charles and Erik walk along the sidewalk, away from the ocean but close enough to still see the waters. They walk down the strip of hotels and ships, towards the pier, where white sailboats and white yachts float on the peaceful water.

This time, Charles leads the way down. He stops in front of a metal contraption used to hang enormous fish: now there are two men standing in front of two large yellowfin tuna and a black marlin. The camera snaps and the men drop their pose.

“You spend a long time out there?” Charles walks up casually, looping his hands into his pockets. He gestures towards the fish. “They’re beautiful fish.”

“Yeah,” laughs one of the men, who is sunburnt and peeling, “This one here,” he points to the largest tuna, “Clocked in at about 230.”

“Pounds?” Charles asks incredulously. “That’s incredible.”

“Yep.” The man’s chest swells with pride. “It’s only our first day too. It’s the best time to catch tuna right now.”

“Wonderful,” Charles says. He holds up a hand in farewell and Erik follows.

“Did you find it?” Charles asks lowly.

“No.”

“We’ll walk around,” Charles decides, “It’s bound to be here somewhere.”

Even from where they walk along the port, it’s difficult to read the names painted on the sides of the yachts and the sailboats.

“We have time,” Erik says, although he peers at the boats intently.

“Slow down,” Charles says. “We’re on vacation.”

“We’re pretending to be on vacation,” Erik counters, but he places his hands into his pockets and adopts a leisurely pace.

They don’t find Esperanza, but they decide to climb back up to Las Playas, back to the same platform they stood at a few hours ago. Another crowd has gathered in front of the promontory. Charles leans back on the railing, watching them, and Erik squeezes the ball of metal in his pocket.

A taxi splutters up the hill and Charles pushes himself off the railing just as the webbed mutant slams his car door shut. He crosses the road.

Without preamble, the mutant pulls another paper from his pocket with his webbed fingers. Erik takes it and unfolds it while Charles asks, curiously, “How long can you hold your breath underwater for?”

Erik begins, “I don’t think – ”

The mutant holds up five greenish fingers.

“Five hours?” guesses Charles. The mutant nods. “Fascinating,” Charles says, shifting closer.

Before Charles can ask any more questions, however, Erik says thank you curtly.

The mutant pinches two fingers together and then opens them.

Erik sighs and pulls out a few bills from his pocket.

“If he’s with Azazel,” Charles begins curiously, as the mutant gets into his car and speeds away, “Why do you have to pay him?”

“So he won’t tell Azazel,” Erik says. He stuffs the paper into his pocket. “Palacios is flying to Cabo San Lucas after this.”

The two of them head back down to the hotel, walking over meandering roads and past bustling shops. It’s late now; the sun has sunk well below its zenith.

If anything, the beaches and streets are more crowded in the early evening, beach-goers preferring the milder sun and bars beginning to open.

Erik and Charles make their way back to the hotel, but not before stopping to buy two tacos from a street vendor. They finish their street food and enter their hotel room.

Charles walks into the hotel room first, striding to the window and pulling it shut, drawing the curtains tight. He toes off his shoes and lies down on the bed.

Erik walks into the bathroom, peeling off his clothes and pulling on a dark wetsuit, the same one he wore when Charles fished him out of the ocean so many months ago. He steps out of the bathroom and stops by the lamp on the desk.

“Do you want me to turn on the light?”

“It’s fine,” Charles says.

“I’m leaving,” Erik says. They look at each other for a moment and then the bed creaks when Charles shifts into a more comfortable position.

“If you don’t come back before eleven – ”

“I’ll be back before then,” Erik says, and then he leaves the room, the door swinging shut as he slips out.

Charles follows Erik’s movements as he goes, very carefully brushing against the minds of those around him to make sure none of them remember the man slipping out of the shadows in a dark wetsuit. Erik reaches the water. By now, the sun has all but set and no one lingers on the beach; all the tourists have gone searching for tequila.

Erik slips into the water easily, and Charles feels him push through the water smoothly. Satisfied, Charles shifts his attention away from Erik and sits up. He walks over to his suitcase and fishes out a hook of metal. He places it around his ear and then lies back down on the bed, on top of the covers.

 

* * *

 

 In Acapulco, Mexico, the hotels have begun to shine their bright lights and the bars have begun to open. Visitors flock to the main strip of bars and clubs.

A few yachts and sailboats have unanchored, sailing out into the dark sea, playing music and flashing lights. Esperanza is one of these yachts, and her bright lights make it easy for Erik Lehnsherr to follow.

He swims expertly through the water; it’s easy to follow since Esperanza is only cruising, her owners directing her on a leisurely sail out of the bay. The yacht drops her anchor down again when the lights of Acapulco have blurred and the seas are calm all around. Someone pops open a bottle of champagne and the dozen people or so on the yacht are all on the deck, including the captain, who has grounded the ship and is eager for a shot of tequila.

Erik slips onto the swim platform easily, grabbing onto the metal sides of the ladder and hoisting himself up without a sound. He waits there for a moment, salt water dripping off of his slick wetsuit and back into the ocean. He wipes his hair back so he can see and creeps into the main cabin, swiping a towel as he goes.

Outside, the crush of people are oblivious: they crowd the front deck of the ship and cheer as a large man downs his sixth shot.

Erik works hastily: he finds an unusually thin briefcase and feels it gingerly with his dry hands to ensure that the case is safe to open. When nothing feels unusual, Erik undoes the lock of the briefcase easily, pressing on the metal.

The lips of the latch part easily under Erik’s touch and he pushes through the papers. He flips through a magazine, reading material, and a map of Mexico before finding a square ticket. He pulls it out and glances at it. He carefully puts it back and looks through the rest of the briefcase. When he finds nothing useful, his expression pinches.

With his powers, he feels the belt of a man swaying across the body of the yacht. Erik closes the briefcase and returns the latch back to its original shape; he creeps out of the cabin and back down to the metal ladder of the swim platform before one of the guests on Esperanza can find him. Erik holds onto the metal ladder, the salt water lapping at his waist, thinking. He feels the metal engine of the yacht humming. He wonders how long it would take for the yacht to sink. They’re far enough out in the ocean that no one will hear the crack of a hull.

Eventually he slips back into the water. Underneath him, Erik feels submarine communications cables, laid out on the sea bed like strings leading him back to shore. He feels their stranded steel wires, aluminum water barriers, and copper tubings and, using their tug, he pulls himself back to the shore, half swimming, half using his powers.

Back at his hotel room, the white curtain sags lowly. There is no one in the hotel room. Charles Xavier left as soon as he located a small bar on the outskirts of town, hailing a cab and riding there only a few minutes after Erik left for Esperanza.

Now, Charles finds himself sitting in a dimly-lit bar, about as large as his room back in Westchester, next to a mutant with webbed-fingers and gills. Around the table sits various other mutants. The owner of the bar fills a thick glass with beer while peering at Charles and his companions – the only patrons of the bar at the moment – with eerily orange eyes.

The entire table of mutants speaks in rapid Spanish but Charles has held his fingers to his temple since before he entered the bar. There’s a deck of _lotería_ cards out on the table and the mutants play.

“So, you’re saying they don’t know?” Charles says to a woman with inky blue hair.

She fires off a rapid line in Spanish but never takes her eyes off the card game.

“They know but they don’t care?” Charles guesses, pressing at his temple, pushing his meaning into her mind.

“Something like that,” he gets, “They don’t care because we stay here. We have our own community and we don’t bother them. It’s an enclave.”

Charles is momentarily distracted when the entire table, and the bartender, whoop – although some in joy and some in despair. Then he looks back at the woman.

“What about him?” Charles asks, undeterred, pointing to the sketch of Palacios on the table.

She shakes her head, her hair shimmering. Then her dark shoulders lift and fall in apology.

“It’s fine,” Charles says, nodding. He readjusts the piece of metal on his ear and then downs the rest of his drink. “Thank you.” He rises.

The mutants around the table throw up a hand in farewell and Charles does the same, calling out goodbye as he exits the bar.

He eventually flags down a cab. As he slips into the back of the taxi, he pulls the metal contraption Hank gave him from his ear and puts it into his pocket.

In the hotel room, Erik struggles out of his wetsuit, the material sticking to his skin. He slips his arms out, and when the door clicks open, the material is pushed down to his waist.

Charles closes the door as he leans back against it, his shoulders pushing into the wood. “Did you find anything?”

Erik pauses for a moment, holding the material of the wetsuit’s arm in his hand. When Charles makes no move to leave, he says, “No.” Erik yanks at the material and steps out of it, naked. Charles slides his hands into his pocket.

“Was he not there?” Charles asks.

“He was there. I found his briefcase. There just wasn’t anything in it.” Erik scoops up the wetsuit and walks towards the bathroom. Leaving the door open behind him, Erik tosses the wetsuit into the tub and bends over the sink, splashing water onto his face. Charles follows slowly, placing one foot unhurriedly in front of the other, his heels pressing into brown carpet until he stops before entering the bathroom. He leans against the doorframe and watches Erik.

“Nothing at all?”

“You know what I mean,” Erik says roughly. “The only thing relevant to us was his airplane ticket.”

“Cabo?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Hm.”

Erik dries his face and pushes out of the bathroom. Charles peels off of the doorframe and follows once again.

“He’s smart,” Erik says, walking across the room to his suitcase.

“Why’s that?” Charles says, only half-interested in the answer. When Erik turns slightly, Charles drags his gaze down Erik’s body unashamedly: the planes of his chest, the smooth expanse of his belly, his soft cock and his strong thighs. Charles feels his own cock twitch in interest. He clears his throat.

Erik, who has been projecting single-minded determination since seeing Esperanza docked in the port that afternoon, does not notice. He pulls out a pair of boxers and puts them on.

“He doesn’t carry anything important on himself. I don’t know what’s in his suitcase but I doubt it’s much.” Erik tugs a worn shirt from his suitcase and tugs that on as well. He straightens and then pauses. Erik thumbs the corner of his mouth.

Charles looks at him. “What is it?”

“He’s going to tourist cities,” Erik answers. “It’s easier to hide there. They see new faces every day. But I don’t know if it’s because he’s careful, or because he thinks he’s being followed.”

“Right,” Charles says.

Erik’s mind pulses with energy: he’s thinking of Palacios’ suitcase and the mutant taxi driver, or possibly finding the captain of the yacht. And then he’s running through a thousand possibilities, comparing Palacios’ actions to men he’s hunted before. Charles pulls away. He interrupts Erik’s thoughts. “Well, we’ll leave tomorrow as well. Fly up to Los Cabos and see what’s there.”

“Sure,” Erik says. And then he sits at the desk and pulls out a map and a pen. On the desk, Erik has a list of visits that Palacios has paid to the Hotel Los Flamingos within the last year, provided by Azazel’s mutant. He runs a pen over the list.

Charles hesitates where he stands.

“Did you find anything?” Erik remembers to ask.

“No,” Charles says. He steps forward, one shoe in front of the other, until he reaches the desk. He places a hand on the back of Erik’s chair. Erik’s skin emanates heat. “Not really.”

Erik makes a noise of consideration and then flips through a bundle of receipts: taxis that Palacios ordered through Hotel Los Flamingos. Charles does not touch the fine hairs at the back of Erik’s neck.

Charles watches the man for a moment more before excusing himself and heading to the bathroom. Erik continues working long into the night, poring over his notes and his maps, even after Charles takes a freezing shower and falls into his bed.


	11. Eleven

Charles wakes abruptly, to a high, breathy panting. Charles blinks in the darkness and wonders where he is, why he woke, when he feels the pulse of something dark at the corners of his mind.

Charles brushes his sheets off and sits up. In the next bed over, Erik shakes without sound; Charles wonders when he learned to cry so quietly, even in his sleep.

Charles rises abruptly and says, “Erik.”

Erik shows no sign of waking so Charles sinks a knee onto the edge of his mattress. “Erik,” he repeats, more insistent now. Erik’s mind is in a dark place, throbbing erratically and changing shape, from one shadow to the next. Charles does the next best thing: he attempts to close around Erik’s rapid shapeshifter mind.

When Erik thrashes both physically and mentally, Charles grabs onto Erik’s shoulders. “Erik,” he shakes the sleeping man, “Erik, wake – ”

Erik lunges forward, his reflexes automatic, only half-conscious as he grabs onto Charles’ shoulders, pushing and then yanking roughly, twisting until they switch places; Charles ends up pinned down to the mattress, his legs caught in the sheets.

A soft breath is knocked out of Charles and he blinks up in surprise, his mind on the precipice of plunging into Erik’s and taking over. But then Erik mutters, “Charles?”

“Who else would it be?” Charles bites out. He pulls up a knee to nudge at Erik’s thigh.  “Christ, let me up.”

“I – ” Erik starts. He blinks and then his gaze refocuses on Charles.

“Yes, it’s me,” Charles grunts, attempting to sit up. Erik looks at him for a long minute. "What?"

“You’re allowed to touch,” Erik rumbles, his eyes surprisingly sharp for someone who just woke up.

“I – what are you on about?”

“Last night,” Erik says, his voice low and slightly hoarse from sleep.

“You – ”

“You can touch me,” Erik repeats, impossibly lower. His hips roll and his stomach presses into Charles’ hip.

Charles growls lowly and reaches out, grabbing onto Erik’s hair and yanks down. When he speaks, it’s into Erik’s ear: “What if I don’t want to?”

“I want you to,” Erik says and Charles twists his fingers tighter; he knows that it hurts.

“You’re sure about that?” Charles asks.

In response, Erik rolls his hips once more and Charles nips the soft skin of his ear. “Want you to,” Erik repeats, his words slurred.

Charles hums in consideration, and then wriggles out from underneath Erik; Erik allows him and Charles ends up with his chest pressed against Erik’s. Charles rocks his hips teasingly and Erik whines softly.

“Oh darling,” Charles laughs bitterly, reaching down to cup the bulge in Erik’s pants. “You just have to ask.”

 

* * *

  

The Xavier’s School bustles with commotion: several students clamor in the kitchen, attempting to cook lunch, and several others run through the house, playing a game. It is December 11th, 1963.

In the basement, however, voices are calm and quiet.

“So you haven’t been able to contact them?”

Hank shakes his head. “If they could, then they would’ve contacted us a long time ago. We just have to assume they’re alright.”

Raven hums and picks up a gadget from Hank’s lab bench. “Do you think about the CIA anymore?”

“I – not really,” Hank says, surprised.

“Not at all?”

“Why would I?”

Raven reaches into her pocket and pulls out a plastic tag. She places it onto the table. Her yellow eyes fix onto Hank.

Curved claws reach out and pick up the plastic tag. Hank turns it over in his hands methodically. He asks, “What’s this?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“It looks just like a plastic tag. I don’t – ”

“Look,” Raven interrupts, putting her hands around Hank’s and pulling up, yanking the plastic into the light.

“It’s – they’re numbers.”

Raven rolls her eyes.

“It looks like – it can’t be.”

“What is it?” Raven demands.

“When I was at the CIA,” Hank begins, “I was given a code. It looks something like this. It’s a security clearance.” Hank frowns. “Where did you get this?”

“I had laundry day yesterday,” Raven explains. “I found it in Charles’ cardigan.” She laughs at herself. “Good thing it was my turn to do laundry and not Alex’s.”

Hank frowns. “Why would the professor have something like this?”

“I think Jimena gave it to him.”

“The woman you met in Nicaragua? Why would she – ”

“She saw things,” Raven says vaguely, “She must’ve had a CIA agent stay at the hotel, or something like that.”

“What – what are we going to do?”

Raven grins.

 

* * *

  

“Isn’t strange?”

“What is?”

Charles drops his head onto the pillow, his hair flopping into his eyes. He brushes it away. He inhales the smell of seawater and warm air. “That this is only the second time we’ve slept together.”

Erik has already settled himself at the desk, pen in hand, flipping through his papers. He pauses and looks at Charles.

Charles is still in bed, drowsy and soft and compliant with sleep. Erik does not turn away. Instead he looks and drinks his fill.

“You want more?” Erik raises an eyebrow.

Charles frowns at the ceiling. “I thought that bit was obvious, but – ”

“Is that not what this is?” Erik continues.

“I only meant that it doesn’t feel as though we’ve only been here twice.” Charles rubs his temple to assuage the beginnings of a headache.

“Then what does it feel like,” Erik answers, not entirely unkindly.

“Feels like we’ve been here before.”

Erik’s pen drops to the table as he picks up a map. “We have,” he answers finally.

“But not quite,” Charles says. He stretches for a moment and then relishes the warmth of his sheets and the air around him.

“We don’t have that much time,” Erik says after a pause.

“Time for what?”

“Time for more.” Erik picks up his pen carefully.

“And why do you say that?”

Erik glances up. “You can’t possibly think that this will work out.”

“What, me and you?”

Erik shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Charles says carefully.

With a huff, Erik replies, “You were never very good at lying, Charles.”

“And you think I’m lying now?”

“I think you know that we won’t work out.”

“And why’s that?”

“Some way, somehow – even if Cuba had never happened – something would’ve come between us, a rift, that exposed our differences.”

“For a while, I thought so too, my friend,” Charles sits up and reaches for his pants. “But there’s a way.”

“Fascinating,” Erik says dryly.

“Erik – ”

“I want to listen,” Erik says, “I do. Charles, you know I want – ”

“What is it that you want?”

“We have to go,” Erik maneuvers around the point. “We have a flight to catch.”

“Don’t think this is over,” Charles warns, but acquiesces and finishes dressing regardless.

They pack up their things and head downstairs quickly, with Charles leading the way. Charles walks up to the hotel clerk while Erik goes outside to call a taxi, and the two pile into the back of the cab several minutes later.

After arriving at their terminal, Charles and Erik make their way to the plane, which they later find to be filled at maximum capacity. A baby cries, and behind them, a rather large party orders several drinks to start the flight.

Erik’s mind is tumultuous – it has been since they left the hotel. Charles senses the edges of his thoughts beginning to throb with dark energy and, automatically, he sends out a telepathic wave that is the physical equivalent of dragging an open palm down Erik’s cold spine.

Erik shudders in his seat.

“Sleep,” Charles says. He expects a retaliation, a tight request to stay out of his head, but there is nothing but the quiet, even breathing of Erik as Charles guides him into sleep.

 

* * *

  

They land a few hours later. The pilot says something over the intercom – Erik doesn’t listen – and then around them, passengers begin unbuckling their belts and collecting their things. Erik leans over and shakes Charles awake.

Charles wakes suddenly, blinking quickly before seeing Erik. “Sorry,” he mutters, “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“It’s fine,” Erik says roughly.

“Did you – ”

“I slept. If anyone asks,” Erik says, undoing his seat belt buckle, “We’re going on a fishing trip.”

“A fishing trip?” Charles peers out the window. A dry desert meets his gaze.

“Marlin, if they want details.”

Charles looks at Erik thoughtfully.

“Come on,” Erik says. “Let’s go.”

They exit the airplane and the terminal and it quickly becomes apparent that they’ve landed in a desert: around them, the sky is clear and endless and the desert is golden-brown; on the horizon, the air shimmers with heat.

Charles rents them a car just as another plane lands. Erik suddenly steps closer, his elbow brushing against Charles’ arm.

“Hello,” Charles smiles at the clerk politely. “I’d like to rent a car.”

It takes a few tense minutes for paperwork to go through. As soon as the clerk prints the receipt, Charles takes it, turns on his heels, and strides towards the rental car.

“He’s heading towards that black SUV,” Erik says.

“Yes, I know,” Charles says tightly, “You realize that I can feel them as well? Faintly.”

Erik climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the car. Charles climbs in as well and they peel out of the dirt parking lot, following a black SUV into the dust.

“Someone was waiting for him,” Erik says, “I couldn’t tell – ”

“I don’t think it matters,” Charles says tightly, “It’s a bodyguard or something.”

“Maybe.” Erik shifts in his seat.

Out of the airport, they speed down a two-lane road. The herd of cars all head in the opposite direction of the black SUV and Charles and Erik’s rental car; the crowd rushes towards Los Cabos while the black SUV heads north, tires pounding over the road.

“Recently paved,” Charles notices.

“Tourism’s booming,” Erik says curtly. He accelerates.

On the left side of the road, the desert blurs: tall cactus and scraggly bushes, pale dirt and rocky mountains beyond. On the right side, a sliver of the ocean peeks out over the undulations of the land, sparkling and winking at the two cars that fly by. Save for them, the road is empty.

Erik swears in German suddenly and Charles leans forward to watch the black SUV swerve off the road, its enormous tires eating up the desert terrain easily, muscling past the scraggly bushes and avoiding cactus.

“We can’t follow him,” Charles says, even as Erik’s grip tightens. They pass a green sign that tells them they’ve just passed the exit to a golf course. “Erik, we can’t; it’s too obvious and the car – ”

Erik clenches down tighter on the wheel.

“Let’s go back for now,” Charles says, “We can come back tonight; I doubt there’s much out there anyway – ”

“I can feel them,” Erik says, “That’s it.”

“It’s what?”

“They have a compound,” Erik jerks his head in the direction that the SUV went, “I can feel the metal girders. That’s where he’s headed.”

“That’s what we’re looking for,” Charles says grimly. “Come on, turn the car around.”

Erik swerves onto the dirt in the same way the SUV did.

“Erik, Christ, turn the bloody car around!”

Tires squeal against cement and dirt as Erik peels the car into a perfect u-turn, landing them back on the road, heading south, towards the airport and Los Cabos.

“It was a risky idea following them out here anyway,” Charles bites out through his teeth, “If they noticed – ”

“They didn’t,” Erik says curtly.

“Which one of us is the telepath?” Charles asks and Erik scowls.

The drive back to Cabos is quiet. Charles’ heart beats, quiet but quick, in his chest, his fingers curled around the handle of his door. Erik fixes his thunderous gaze on the road.

As two men who’ve spent a while on the road before, they fall into a pattern easily: Charles exits the car as soon as Erik parks, heading into the closest, most crowded, hotel to speak to the clerk while Erik pulls the luggage out of the back.

They settle into their established rhythm without much effort, which leaves them plenty of space to fill with their murky thoughts.

They head into their hotel room; neither of them has the energy to look around much, but the sun stains everything. It causes Charles to throw up a hand to block the sun. Erik looks out a window of the stairwell they climb up and sees the Pacific Ocean kissing the white shore.

Again, when they reach their room, Erik drops his things and heads into the bathroom first. Charles follows suit, placing his suitcase and bag at the foot of the bed farthest from the door. He heads towards the window, his thin fingers folding around the edges of a thin curtain as he looks at the ocean.

“If you want to go outside, do it now,” Erik says as the door to the bathroom opens.

“It does look rather nice,” Charles says. He’s calmer now. “And the weather’s wonderfully warm.”

“Go ahead,” Erik says.

Charles sits on the foot of a bed and relaces his shoes. “Care to accompany me?”

For a moment, Erik has an excuse ready to be delivered, something about fixing his map or getting rest. He’s about to speak – even though he’s already scribbled the date into his map, directly on the Sea of Cortez, and he’s slept on the airplane already – when Charles finishes tying his shoe, pulling the string taut before standing. “I’ll give you a heads’ start,” Charles says, not looking up as he walks to the door of the room, swinging it open.

Charles heads outside briskly, looping his hands into his pockets and relishing the warm rush of air against his bare arms. It’s difficult to believe that it’s December.

He walks down a flight of stairs and steps into the evening chill. As he walks down a strip of the beach, towards the tuna cannery, a picturesque arch made completely out of stone rises out of the ocean, accompanied by a distinctive rock formation. Impossibly blue water laps at a white beach. The sky is cloudless.

The smell of seawater and brine, carried on an afternoon breeze, rushes out to meet Charles, carding salty fingers through his hair. He walks without thinking, without reaching out to sense whether or not Erik follows. The sea seems to put him at ease: his blood slows and the tension in his shoulders drains.

In the hotel room, Erik squeezes Moira’s bullet. It molds under his grip like clay, wearing his fingerprints like bruises. It falls onto the hotel room’s desk with a clatter and then smooths out into the streamline shape of a bullet once more. The door opens with a silent creak and Erik walks out of the hotel room, leaving his bullet and his maps behind him.

Erik locates Charles with the metal on his wrist and Charles locates Erik by the soft currents of his thoughts. They walk down to the water.

The ocean laps against the sand and Charles squats down, dipping two fingers into the water. On the horizon, a few fishing boats bob. A while passes. Charles feels the ocean and Erik feels the wires of metal underneath, the trans-Pacific telephone cables. They are both still.

Then Charles rises, satisfied, and they walk back to the hotel.

It’s dark now, and would be almost impossible to navigate back to the hotel if not for the yellow lights illuminating the hotel’s facade.

They walk past the tuna cannery, up a strip of sand, when Erik reaches out and deliberately grabs Charles’ wrist. He squeezes, extremely hard, for a second and then drops his hand. Alert, Charles recognizes the presence of two extremely faint minds nearby.

With this warning, Charles slowly raises two fingers to his temple as they walk.

Erik presses a brief thought to Charles’ mind, an image of a metal coil and a uniform, before building a wall to block off his thoughts once more.

“Erik,” Charles murmurs aloud, unwilling to forcibly push his way into Erik’s mind, “They could be just passing by. ”

Erik doesn’t listen to Charles; he listens to the way metal coils hum with thought, he listens to the way a metal anchor in the ocean sinks into the sand.

“Erik,” Charles repeats, slightly more urgently.

There is a very faint slithering sound – a whispery sound not unlike metal chains dragging across wood; Charles looks over his shoulder as he walks, his elbow brushing with Erik’s, as Charles towards the ocean from where the sound came, squinting in the darkness. He only sees the dark outlines of sailboats. “Erik,” Charles hisses suddenly, reaching out a grabbing Erik’s arm, “Don’t – ”

Erik pushes Charles down just as the sound of bullets rip through the air, their knees collapsing in the sand. Automatically, Charles reaches out to grab onto Erik’s outstretched hand, but there’s already the sound of metal chains flying into the air.

Charles shouts with frustration, an unintelligible sound from his throat, and scrabbles to his feet, rushing across the sand to where three bodies writhe in the sand like maggots trying to burrow themselves beneath the earth. Charles falls back into the sand once more, his hands shaking as he reaches out to steady one of the men.

Erik watches from afar, his eyes dark, twisting his hands at his sides, splitting the metal links of the anchor’s chain into slivers, and then using those slivers to pin down the men’s hands and crush their guns. Behind them, seven plastic bullets bury themselves in the sand.

The thick metal chains around their throats tighten; before they die, Charles pushes all three of the men into sleep with difficulty.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” Charles spits. His head throbs from pushing past their metal coils.

“So what,” Erik asks, “Was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t supposed to use violence,” Charles snarls, suddenly vicious.

“Charles,” Erik reaches out.

“Don’t touch me,” Charles says, his voice dangerously low. “I thought – ”

“You thought wrong,” Erik says. His nostrils flare. “I told you, when this began. I told you, none of this would change anything.”

“I thought it would, alright?” Charles says, whirling around to face the other man. “Call me what you will, but I thought this could change – ”

“This?” Erik asks. “What is _this_? You and I, Charles? Did you think that you could change me?”

Charles turns around and heads for the hotel. Erik growls in frustration, turning around and heading back towards the beach.

As he walks, Erik reaches into his pocket, yanking out a fat cigar. From his other pocket, with his powers, Erik pulls out a lighter. The flame flickers orange in the dark before Erik puts it out. He sucks on his cigar and blows the smoke out. The white rings float up into the sky and Erik watches them dissipate into nothingness.

Charles strides back to the hotel, his cheeks flushed and his eyes dark. He walks up the stairs and enters their room. A single bullet waits on the desk, glinting in the cheap overhead lights. It winks at Charles the same way it did more than a year ago, on a Cuban beach, under a Cuban sun.

 

* * *

  

In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the moon peers down on Playa del Amor – Lovers Beach – watching the ocean and the earth. Other than the breaths of the ocean, the world is still. These are the odd hours between sunset and sunrise; it is a moment between December 11th and December 12th, 1963.

In a plain hotel on the beachfront, a man rises in a hotel room. He slips out of bed, already dressed in only slightly wrinkled clothes that he fell asleep in. The moon eyes the man curiously as he walks out of the hotel and down the beach, in the opposite direction of the cannery, towards the dirt road that leads out of town, to the north.

The man walks for a while, feet scuffing the earth beneath him. He looks up at the sky and then down to the earth and then at his hands.

His shoes have just begun to cover with a thin film of dust when he looks up suddenly. There’s a car driving down the road, towards the man. He holds up a hand to his face to shield his eyes from the bright headlights.

The car crunches on dirt as it pulls up next to him, enormous tires swerving off the road.

The man frowns.

The headlights of the car flick off suddenly; the moon returns to watch as the car door opens. From within the car, a man leaps out, lunging for the first man.

The moon blinks and both of the men disappear into the car, the second man shoving and pushing at the first.

Crunching on dirt as it jerks forward, the car steers away and drives further into the desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Hacienda hotel [here](http://www.oldcabo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/view-hacienda-hotel-from-bay-1966.jpg).
> 
> Cabo San Lucas Arch [here](http://www.loscabosguide.com/cabopictures/pics/cabo-san-lucas-arch-r2.jpg).


	12. Twelve

“Hold on!”

Water splatters on the ground as a wet cloth, dripping with diluted rubbing alcohol, drops onto the floor. Someone curses loudly.

“Sh, Ororo’ll hear you!” says a voice.

“Quit cussing,” agrees someone else.

“Hank?” Angel calls after the departing figure. She floats in the air, in the middle of wiping a ceiling light clean. “Where are you going?”

Raven drops her mop.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Alex says loudly. Sean swats him.

Raven paces after Hank, following his broad shoulders up the stairs. “Hank?” she calls as she steps into his room after him.

“I just remembered something,” Hank says, rummaging through the books on a shelf. “The clearance code on that plastic tag – I knew the number looked familiar – ”

“What are you talking about?” Raven frowns.

“Benjamin Travis,” Hank announces, pulling a thick binder from the shelf. He places it on his desk and cracks it open, blowing on it.

“Why did you have to blow on it?” Raven frowns.

Hank pushes up his glasses. “Well I thought there’d be dust on it – and I wanted to blow it off, but I guess it hasn’t been there long enough to accumulate – ”

“Hank!”

“Right, sorry. I used to work for Travis,” Hank pulls out a manila folder gingerly, “He was the head of the department of Intelligence and Analysis, which means he was important,” Hank says hastily at Raven’s pointed look. “Anyway.” Hank runs a claw down his paper and then point to a number. “These are the last four digits of his clearance. Do they – ”

Raven pulls out the plastic tag and compares the two numbers. “They match.”

“I’d need his approval on a few projects,” Hank explains, “And so he’d put his code down and approve it, like a signature, I guess.”

“Why is his code here?” Raven demands.

Hank shrugs. “I could be wrong, but – ”

“No,” Raven says, “I believe you, it’s just – why would we need this?”

Hank inhales. “Well,” he begins tentatively. “I think there’s only one way to find out.”

 

* * *

 

White lights flare in a covert compound in the middle of the desert some distance away from the city of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. For all of the heat and desert beyond its thick walls, cold air pumps in through a grate in the ceiling. The compound, several floors underneath both the earth and sea level, is completely sterile, built out of bleach-white walls and tiles. The unforgiving lights crawl over the lines in the tile, hungrily searching for color but finding only white latex gloves and syringes and rubber. It is December 12th, 1963.

The door to the level of the compound that is deepest underground swings open. Two men dressed in black, wearing matching belts and guns, hoist an unconscious body into the room. The harsh lights shine eagerly over new color in the room: black boots, brown dust against white tile, the red swell of a lip, flushed cheeks.

The two men, burly guards, grunt and mutter to one another in Spanish as they drag the body across white tiles, to a glass barrier that creates a cage of sorts.

“Get back,” one of the guards barks out roughly. This guard steps away from the body and pulls out a plastic gun with one hand, pointing it up in warning as he unlocks a piece of the glass with the other hand. The second guard kicks in the body. The glass door shuts and locks with a click. The two guards turn and exit the room; the lights follow their dark footsteps carefully.

In the pseudo-cage, figures gather around the unmoving body.

“Is he dead?”

“Shut up!”

“He might be though – ”

“Go on, help him!”

A girl shuffles forward, her eyes glinting in the harsh light. She touches the unmoving body on the shoulder with four fingers.

The unconscious body suddenly jerks forward and Charles blinks his eyes open rapidly. After a second, he moves. First, he sits up and blinks blearily at his watch. Second, he rasps, “I didn’t expect to wake up that quickly.”

“Are you sure you’re a mutant?” the girl peers at Charles.

“Leave him alone,” says a man. “Let him come around.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Charles blinks again under the lights that shine into his blue eyes. “Am I in the compound?”

Four pairs of eyes watch him intently.

“You are,” answers a woman. “Who are you?”

“My name is Charles Xavier,” Charles stands unsteadily. “And I’m going to help you.”

“You realize you’re inside, right? With us?” the girl asks sourly.

The woman hushes her.

“I was sedated,” Charles frowns. “How did I – ”

“I helped,” the girl pipes up. “I took it away.” She wiggles her hands.

“Incredible,” Charles says genuinely, “Thank you, but – ”

“They’re supposed to give you a tag,” the woman says, catching onto Charles’ confusion, “They knock you out, dump you in here, and then come back later to stick a tag in ya.” She lifts her arm up and gestures towards a small scar on her bicep. “Supposed to keep your mutation under control.”

“Except for Maryam,” the man nods at the girl, “They thought she only had one mutation. She screamed so loudly they didn’t notice her secondary mutation: healing.”

A tall boy squints at Charles. “You are a mutant, right?”

“I’m a telepath,” Charles says.

“Like Emma,” interrupts the girl again.

“She was here?” Charles asks. “Emma Frost?”

“You know her?” asks a man, and Charles should ask for names, but his watch ticks impatiently.

“I did,” Charles says quickly, “How did they – ”

“We lived in San Diego,” the woman explains. “Brought us down here last week, wouldn’t explain a thing. Emma was the only one here but she was – well, she wasn’t in any position to welcome us here.”

Charles grimaces. “They used her to find me. My telepathy, that is – they can track it down.”

The man says, “They operate on minimal staff here. The place is designed to only be run with a few of them out there. If we had our powers, we could – ”

“Oh,” Charles smiles delightedly. “That’s where I come in.” He leans down to the girl. She looks at him and he reaches out, wiggling two fingers over her temple. “May I?”

 

* * *

 

Later that day, Raven will walk up a cement path to a nondescript CIA compound, her heels clacking against the pavement, her figure casting a shadow across the ground. Her brown hair will bounce slightly as she walks.

Her watch tells her that it is nearly seven; the grounds of the government facility have been mostly vacated, save for a few people heading toward their cars and for home. The facility will close at seven today, the front doors locking automatically.

She will stride up to the glass doors. Wires dangle from her ears but she only has one earbud in.

“Straight through those doors,” a tinny voice says through her earbud, “Should be down the hallway and to the left.”

As she approaches the entrance, Raven will see a woman in an industrial uniform sweeping the pavement in front of the building.

From where he sits, a few hundred yards away in a car in direct line of the compound, Hank will say into the radio, “Raven, don’t – ”

“Hi,” Raven will ignore the voice in her ear and approach the woman directly. Raven will smile. “I’m sorry, I’m a little lost. I’m here for Mr. Travis, I’m his new assistant. I know I’m late but I forgot his paperwork on the desk. Would you mind showing me – ” she will trail off, looking down shyly.

“I work there,” the worker says, “I’ll take you right in.”

“Oh, thank you,” Raven will grin, “I really am sorry, but I completely forgot...”

She continues on and Hank, from where sits, will cross his arms over his chest, watching the two women disappear into the compound.

“She’ll be fine,” Alex will say, from where he sits in the driver’s seat.

Hank will push his glasses up.

Inside, Raven follows the janitor into the Intelligence and Analysis Unit, into a room with a blinking screen. “Thank you,” Raven will say again.

The woman will nod and leave, the door clicking shut behind her.

Raven smirks. “See?” she will say into the microphone hidden in her shirt.

At that, Darwin will peel off the wall, his skin returning to its normal color. “Not bad,” he’ll say, brushing wallpaper dust off his hands.

“Not bad yourself,” Raven will grin at him.

Raven will click the screen and tap in a number inscribed on a plastic tag she pulls out of her pocket. A few taps later, a screen will pop up.

“Shit,” Darwin will say, impressed.

Files pop up on screen and Hank will walk Raven through how to navigate the files.

“God,” Darwin will say, “There’s so much here.”

“It’s encrypted,” Hank will say quickly, “So we can’t copy the files. Read fast.”

 

* * *

  

In the present, in Los Cabos, Erik Lehnsherr takes the stairs down a drowsy hotel to a beach; he is awake before anyone else in the vicinity. His shoes sink into the sand. In his pockets are orbs of metal.

After reviewing the file with Palacios’ copy of tax returns a few days ago, Erik knows that the man plans on sailing out tonight on the yacht he owns. Erik walks down the port quickly and finds the yacht.

Thick metal chains rattle on the wooden deck of the yacht in the same way the ribcage of a lion rattles as the beast yawns before it rises. The sun peeks over the horizon as Erik twists his hands: the chains of the anchor plunge into the engine of the yacht like bullets and the sound reverberates over the ocean.

Erik strides off the beach, his hands in his pockets and his expression stony, towards the dirt road.

 

* * *

 

 A woman climbs off her flight, a red-eye straight from San Francisco to Cabo San Lucas. She grabs her things and walks out to a red car where her two companions await her.

One of them waves and the other calls out, “Took you long enough!”

The woman smiles and climbs into the car.

“Welcome to the desert,” one of the men says.

“It’s nice,” she replies, looking out her window as they peel out of the airport, “But I can’t wait to see the ocean.”

“Oh yeah,” chuckles the driver, “We’re going to the bay and we’re staying there. You don’t want to drive past this airport; this is the farthest up north I’ve ever been.”

“Is that so?” she adjusts her earring.

“Outside of the port, it’s undeveloped for miles, sweetheart. Nothing but the desert. You wouldn’t want to run out of gas there. No one in their right mind drives out in that desert.”

 

* * *

  

Erik climbs into a rental car, courtesy of the hotel he’s staying at, and peels onto the dirt road, driving into the desert. He chews the inside of his cheeks, the only outward indication of his nervousness.

His foot taps on the acceleration and dust flies out from underneath his tires as he drives.

 

* * *

  

Even with Hank’s metal hook clipped around his ear, it takes a considerable amount of effort on Charles’ part in order to dig out the mutants’ powers out from underneath the suppressants, but in the end, the lanky boy presses his hand against the reinforced glass and the entire floor _shudders._ The guards do not notice because they are on the ground, waiting for Palacios, but Charles mutters, “Slowly now,” and guides the boy’s powers with his mind in the same way that an artist guides a brush.

When the molecular structure of the glass finally gives, Charles pushes the onlookers back with a telepathic shove, all of them covering their heads as the reinforced glass shatters.

“Come on,” Charles says, stepping over the glass gingerly when the pieces settle. “We have to clear their files.”

“We?” repeats the boy, who stares at his hands.

“This is a three-level compound,” Charles says, “Mutants on the third floor, files on the second, guards on the first.”

“How do you – ”

“I pay attention,” Charles says grimly. “Come on.”

A while ago, Hank McCoy showed Charles Xavier exactly how to get into any database and destroy the information there. Charles, however, doesn’t exactly remember how to do this, so he improvises.

Two floors below the ground, the black screens that hide an entire database of information on mutants shakes.

“We know their only database is here,” Charles explains as the tall boy, Ameer, presses two hands to the screen.

“We?”

“So we destroy this one, and Palacios won’t have anything to build back on,” Charles continues, ignoring the interruption.

“How do we know we can trust you?” blurts out the girl, Maryam, suddenly. “How do we know you’ll keep us safe?”

Charles looks down at the pile of rubble. Ameer’s hand leaves the screen. Maryam coughs in the dust. “You don’t,” he says.


	13. Thirteen

Over the years, a family in New York City has built up a number of successful businesses, through both legal and illegal activities. As their business and their fundings expand, the family begins wondering how they can covertly shift their money into an account to hide their wealth. The family began investing in overseas accounts in firms in countries such as Nicaragua and Panama under duplicitous names.

This family, like many other rich American families, businesspeople, and political figures, now hides millions of dollars abroad. However, the documentation and data, conglomerated in one area, is bound to attract attention.

 

* * *

  

“Come on,” Charles says to the four mutants behind him, “I’ll get you out of here.”

Left with no other choice, the mutants follow Charles Xavier reluctantly. Charles leads them up the stairwell, past harsh white lights, and up to the first floor. Charles runs two fingers down the metal hook around his ear and feels Erik’s presence on the ground level. Charles paces to the door that leads into the stairwell and ushers the four mutants behind him inside. They bypass what looks like a decontamination passage, fit with a disinfectant room and shower.

“There’s someone waiting for us?” asks the woman.

“Yes,” Charles says simply. He tries feeling for the other agents and Palacios’ mind, but feels nothing. Charles’ hands tighten into fists as he leads the mutants up to ground level.

All five of them squint at the yellow sun as a trapdoor in the stairwell leads up onto ground floor. Around their heads, dust swirls. For miles around, there is brown dirt and ecru sand. To the right, curvaceous hills rise out of the dirt; and to the left, the land disappears into the horizon.

“Come on,” a gruff voice calls out.

“You’re here,” Charles blinks up at Erik’s silhouette.

 _Later_ , Erik projects into Charles’ mind, the first time in over a year. Charles bites down on his tongue to keep from reacting.

The trap door slams open and Erik helps the four mutants up.

“They’re from San Diego,” Charles says, and his cotton shirt billows in the desert wind. “Do you think – ”

“We have a car,” Erik says, nodding his head to each of the mutants. “We’ll drive you there.”

“You’re a mutant too?” Ameer asks.

“We have to go,” Erik says roughly.

At the same time, a black SUV crunches on the dirt, emerging from behind them. “Our ride,” Erik says, before the mutants can react.

“Erik,” Charles murmurs lowly, fingers grabbing at the material of Erik’s sleeve. The ground beneath them begins to rumble. Charles’ eyes narrow.

“Later,” Erik repeats. He pops open the door to the SUV and Maryam and Ameer climb in. The two other adult mutants hesitate before entering as well, but not without trepidation.

“We’ll drive you to the airport, get you a flight,” Erik says. He climbs into the passenger’s seat gingerly, Charles into the driver’s seat, and the car peels away quickly, spitting dust in its wake.

The woman murmurs her understanding, although she rubs her arm.

“So the tags,” the man leans forward from where he sits. “Disabled permanently?”

“No,” Charles twists his lips apologetically, “I’m just holding back the barrier right now, but Erik can.”

The two mutants in the backseat look at Erik. “I can rearrange the structure of the metal,” Erik explains as he twists around in his seat.

“You can move metal?” asks Maryam. Erik nods curtly.

“You don’t work for the government, do you?” asks the man.

“No,” Charles says. “It’s,” he licks his lips. “I run a school in New York, a school for people like us.”

“For mutants?” Ameer looks up.

“Xavier’s School for the Gifted,” Charles explains. At his side, Erik concentrates on rearranging the structures of the metal tags. “I help mutant children regain control of their powers. But,” he hesitates, “There was an organization that began fearing mutations.”

“Palacios,” the woman guesses.

“He’s getting money from some offshore firms in Latin America,” Erik says, “Paying the American CIA to begin observing and experimenting on mutants.”

The man blanches.

“But we’re going to stop them,” Erik says, looking out the window.

Charles says nothing.

They reach the airport soon after that. Charles feels Ameer and the woman reach for their powers, but he stops the car and the mutants exit. Charles walks them to the travel agent, booking them all flights back to San Diego. He’s grateful when he sees them leave.

“Where are you hurt?” Charles asks when he reenters the car, the same time Erik bites out, “What were you thinking?”

“Fucking hell,” Charles growls, slamming the driver’s door open and then closed, walking around the car to yank open the passenger door.

Erik winces when the metal frame of the car rattles; blood oozes from a bullet hole in his side when he lifts up the side of his leather jacket.

“Christ,” Charles pants, and he peels off his cardigan, pressing it hard against Erik’s side.

“Drive,” Erik says with authority and Charles’ nostrils flare.

He climbs back into the driver’s seat and the engine starts quickly.

“What were you thinking?” Erik rasps again.

“At what moment in time, exactly?” Charles spits. “When you killed that man on the beach or when I left afterwards?”

“You could’ve – ”

“I didn’t.”

The car peels out of the airport and onto the road.

“Are they dead?” Charles demands.

“No,” Erik hisses. His head hits the headrest with a clunk. “I cut their engines as they were driving in. Knocked them out and left them in the desert.”

“You – ”

“Collapsed the metal girders as we were driving out.”

“I know that,” Charles snaps.

Erik continues as though he weren’t interrupted. “No one will find them.”

“They’re not going to make it out of that desert alive,” Charles says.

“I didn’t kill them.”

“Thanks for that,” Charles says sourly.

“You shouldn’t have left without me.”

“It’s over now,” Charles manages, “We’re out.”

“They’re not going to stop at this,” Erik says.

Charles grimaces. “Nor will we.”

 

* * *

 

 “It says that he’s dead!”

“He’s not – ”

“It says here, killed in earthquake along with four other mutants, in captivity – ”

“He’s _not_ dead.”

“ – entire facility buried, unable to find entrance – ”

“Raven, God, he contacted me a few hours ago. They’re at a hotel, Erik was shot, but they’re not – ”

“Then why – ”

“Maybe, it’s better that way.”

“What – ”

“Think about it. No one will be looking for him anymore. No one knows that we’re at the mansion. It’s gone. He’s gone. They’ve nothing on him. They’ll stop looking, they’ll stop sending in agents to the mansion.”

“I – ”

“I’m sure. Raven, trust me.”

“Someone’s coming. I gotta go.”

“Be careful!”

 

* * *

 

 

In a hotel room in Cabo San Lucas, Charles helps Erik clean his wound.

Charles’ hands are steady as he pours rubbing alcohol onto a washcloth; Erik watches Charles without comment.

It’s difficult to tell whether either of them are truly angry; perhaps the tight line between Erik’s eyebrows is frustration, and maybe the quiet clench of Charles’ teeth is not quite disappointment. Regardless, both of them do not speak. Both of them are unsure of what to say.

Charles’ finger brushes against the unblemished skin of Erik’s side as he presses the washcloth onto Erik’s wound. Erik, who stares up at the ceiling, shifts slightly, although not because of the pain.

“Don’t move.”

White cloth stains red. Charles’ nostrils flare; he feels Erik’s internal wince. In his mind, he goes over the events of the day as though he were examining sea glass, turning the rounded edges with his fingers, brushing his thumb along the smooth sides.

Charles presses the first layer of gauze on and begins to reach for the second. Erik reaches out suddenly and takes his hand. The skin of their hands, dry and warm, press against each other. Erik, who sits on a chair underneath the light of a lamp, spreads his legs slightly, tugging Charles into the space between his thighs.

Charles pauses and looks at the other man. As he resumes taping up Erik’s side, Erik’s thighs press against his own. Erik’s hand runs down Charles’ back.

Golden-brown light fills the hotel room, spilling their black shadows over the floor. Around them, the air is humid and lazy. It feels as though they hang suspended, surrounded by warm, sweet light; they are black insects stuck in tree sap, frozen in beautiful chunks of amber.

And when they leave this room, to head to the airport, something will change. It will seem as though the world winds back into motion, as if it had paused for just the two of them, for just one moment.

Charles finishes taping gauze onto Erik’s side. He looks at Erik and Erik looks back at him.

“You should sleep,” Charles says finally. “We’ll fly out tomorrow.”

They will sleep and, when they wake and leave the hotel room the next morning, they will walk barefoot across cold tile into the bathroom. Erik will feel the hotel carpet with his feet and realize that, even after walking barefoot across so many hotel carpets before, in situations not unlike this – Charles still soft and drowsy with sleep, the sun and the world waiting outside their window – he has never really felt the carpet before. He will think of the thousand times they’d stayed in hotels on their trips together and he will think that it all felt like a dream; only now, only this moment here, when the air around them is warm and golden and Charles yawns quietly, is real.

He will put on his shoes and both of them will exit the hotel, driving down to the airport.

 

* * *

  

As Charles finishes wrapping up Erik’s gauze, at the same time across the continent, a man in a suit and tie walks into the Intelligence and Analysis Unit in a CIA compound. He’s cursing under his breath, having just run into the compound; the doors automatically lock at seven and the man, who breathes heavily, had nearly left his briefcase locked in the unit.

He limps into a room and looks around: he sees a few filing cabinets, a black screen that contains mounds of data, and a woman in an industrial uniform tying a plastic bag to a trash can.

“Get out,” he barks at her, and she scrambles to her feet, looking at the ground as she exits the room hastily. The man grabs his briefcase from next to the closest filing cabinet and goes to the screen. Sweat beads around his forehead; this man has just been informed that his offshore money may be compromised due to a data leakage.

The janitor exits the room hastily, one hand still clutching to a grimy trashcan, and paces down the hallway. The rest of the compound is deserted. A dark shadow follows her discreetly.

“Jesus,” she mumbles to herself, “Someone’s grouchy.” She glances over her shoulder. “You good, Darwin?”

“Good,” the shadow answers.

“Are you out?” asks a tinny voice in her earbud.

“Yeah,” she says breezily. As Raven walks down the empty hallway, her brown hair melts and turns blonde. She sighs as she transforms into her human self. “Coast clear?”

“We’re good,” Alex’s voice replies. “Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

  

Desert stretches around the Gulf of California, starting in the boundary where California kisses Arizona, and then stretching down into Baja California, forming the Sonoran Desert. Today, the sun rises slowly over the horizon, peering through the iconic rock arch of Cabo San Lucas, glistening over the clear ocean waters. It is December 13th, 1963.

A single car rattles out of the strip of hotels overlooking the bay at Cabo San Lucas.

“You didn’t ask them to join your school,” Erik comments. He looks out the passenger seat window.

“Did I need to?” Charles squints at the rear view mirror even though nothing looks back, save for their hotel. He looks back at the road ahead. “They had a family, they were in control of their powers.”

Erik grunts.

“You’re surprised,” Charles says.

“Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I didn’t force Emily Tran to come to my school either,” Charles says, “The students have a choice, my friend, I’m not forcing them to come. And – and I’m content with how the school is now.”

“You, content?” Erik raises an eyebrow. “I expected you to have a full mansion by now.”

“There are always surprises, aren’t there?”

“What are you talking about?”

Charles speaks carefully. “Well, I was just thinking. There’s really no need to resort to violence all – ”

The metal in the car thrums warningly, as if to prove to Charles that violence always simmers in the metal in any vicinity that either of them inhabits.

“You didn’t kill Palacios,” Charles says carefully, “You knew what he was, when I came to you in Nicaragua, but you didn’t kill him.”

“I had reason to – ”

“You left Owens and Moreno. And when we came back to the mansion, when the CIA agents were waiting for us – ”

“I killed a man on the beach.”

“You didn’t have to,” Charles says firmly, “You didn’t want to, you didn’t have to, and you knew it. You know it, Erik. I’m not saying you have to change – ”

“Enough,” Erik says curtly.

“I – I want you to come back to Westchester, Erik.”

Erik rasps, “How can you – how can act like this, even after you’ve,” Erik stops.

“Sometimes,” Charles says tightly, “We make mistakes. Or we’re faced with an impossible choice – ”

Erik snaps his teeth together with a vicious click.

“We must not resort to military tactics,” Charles says lowly. Around them, the desert blurs. “But we must be militant in our resistance to discrimination. We work slowly. But we work determinedly. And even if mutants and humans never get along,” Charles continues, his stomach churning, “We mustn’t give up hope, Erik.”

“Oh, hope.” Erik stares at the ocean as they drive. “What good is that to us?”

“Everything,” Charles says, “Why do we help the helpless? What drives us to help them?”

“According to the theory of evolution,” Erik says pointedly, “We shouldn’t.”

“We’re people, Erik. Hope makes us people; the fact that we help those who are beyond helping, the fact that we sustain this – this hope and this, this charity – that is what _humanity_ is, Erik.”

Erik barks out a laugh. “We’re not humans.”

“But we are,” Charles smiles ruefully, “You may call them Neanderthals, but we are more human than they could ever be.”

“And how is that?”

“We make mistakes. We may make horrible, horrible mistakes – ”

“Are you referring to Shaw or are you referring to me?” Erik bites out.

“ – but we may also forgive, my friend. We may have hope, in a better day, in another chance.”

“And is this you, forgiving me?”

Charles swallows. “This is me, asking for your forgiveness, Erik.”

Erik blinks. “What… what for?”

“I should have,” Charles licks his lips, “I should’ve – tried to keep you from leaving. I told you that I would help you – I should’ve fought harder.”

Erik says nothing.

They reach the airport soon after that. Charles walks up to a travel agent and books them both a flight to San Diego. From there, they will connect to another flight and fly straight to New York. Charles thanks the agent and the two of them walk toward the plane in silence.

The flight is uneventful; both of them sleep, exhausted, and wake in San Diego, transfer flights, only to fall asleep again on their second plane.

They wake in New York. Erik blinks his eyes open; it’s hard to believe they’re here.

They’ve decided without much discussion that Erik will stay at the mansion until his wound heals. From there, Charles does not ask where Erik will go. Erik does not tell him.

Erik drives this time, maneuvering the rental car through the city, down to Westchester. The engine hums and Charles bites his lip.

Beyond the car windows, the sky yawns tiredly, foggy breath billowing against the clouds. Charles pulls his cardigan tighter around himself. The frame of the car begins to emanate warmth and Charles tries not to think.

It isn’t long before they reach the road that leads up to the mansion. The car crunches on gravel; the iron gates creak open easily.

The mansion rises up as Erik drives the car up to the front of the garage. The engine dies but when Charles moves to open the door, the handle sticks.

Charles sits back in his seat and looks straight ahead.

“I think,” Erik begins, slowly and hesitantly, “I think it’s easier to love as a child.” Erik hardly ever begins their conversations with such hesitation – Erik is a man of strong will and decisiveness – so Charles listens quietly. “When you’re a child, you see anything around you and everything will open. And, seeing children, it’s easier to talk to them, sometimes, I – but, as an adult, everything becomes – it’s difficult.” Erik’s fists tighten and Charles moves slightly in his seat. “The world,” Erik continues haltingly, “The world becomes closed off, and everything becomes gritty and… Visceral.”

Charles asks, “What are you trying to say?”

“I can’t – I can’t give you the things you give me. The way you – ” Erik breaks off.

The doors of the car click, signaling that they’ve unlocked, but neither man moves. Charles reinforces his mental wards so no emotions will accidentally spill over.

A moment, a heartbeat, a pause later, Charles exhales loudly. “We best go inside,” he says finally, “They’re waiting for us.”

Charles doesn’t mention that his students are not the only ones that will wait.

A while later, after the two men have made their way inside and waded through ecstatic hellos, Erik will climb upstairs and fall asleep in his bed, dead to the rest of the world.


	14. Fourteen

Erik Lehnsherr wakes to a quiet mansion. It is December 14th, 1963.

His side twinges with pain when he sits up but he ignores it methodically, opting instead to continue with his morning routine. He washes up and stretches. Were he feeling better, Erik would most likely go for a run.

Today, however, he pulls on his clothes and heads downstairs. He leaves his bags, fully packed, by the door to his room.

With his powers, Erik can sense that the house is devoid of warm belt buckles and jewelry – the normal things he uses to gauge the locations of the mansion’s inhabitants – save for an anklet and earrings in the kitchen.

Erik comes downstairs to the kitchen, in search of a strong cup of coffee, and is greeted with the sight of Ororo pouring milk into her cereal. He halts.

“Are you here alone?” he rasps.

“Mr. Erik,” Ororo says, delighted. She plunks the carton of milk onto the counter and hurries over to hug his knee. Then she goes back to her cereal.

“They – where is everyone else?”

“In the garden.” Ororo screws the cap onto the carton carefully. When she turns around, the refrigerator door swings open for her. She smiles and places the milk carton into the refrigerator with a flourish.

“You don’t want to join them?” Erik asks curiously.

Ororo rolls her eyes. “They’re looking at the snow. I see snow all the time. And,” she continues, “I was hungry.” She clambers back to her cereal and begins eating with vigor. She mumbles something around a mouthful of cornflakes.

Erik sits at the table across from her. “I’m sorry?”

“Are you staying here?” she asks, blinking up at him. She swings her feet – they don’t reach the floor – in the air and Erik feels the metal charms dancing.

Erik considers her for an indeterminable amount of time. Finally, he says, “I have to go away for a while.”

“Why?”

Erik inhales slowly. “I need some time.”

Ororo chews her cereal thoughtfully. “To do what?”

“I have to think about a lot of things, and I have to – ” Erik clears his throat, looking down at the table. “I can’t stay here.”

A small frown twists Ororo’s mouth. “Oh.” Then, “Will you come back?”

“I don’t know,” Erik says carefully. He watches Ororo finish the rest of her cereal.

The students at Xavier’s School trickle inside slowly, filling the kitchen and the living room. As soon as they do, Erik begins to get up to leave but Alex and Darwin plant themselves in chairs on either side of him.

“Charles is dead,” Alex begins without preamble. Darwin peels off his gloves methodically.

Erik says, “What.”

“In the CIA’s database,” Darwin picks up, “They registered your earthquake – someone must’ve found them or something – ”

At this Erik frowns.

“ – because they registered Charles and the other mutants as deceased. Loss of files and everything. The whole project’s gone.”

“But,” Alex says, leaning in, “The most important thing – ”

A loud clatter fills the room as Raven and Angel walk inside, brushing snow from their clothes onto the kitchen floor.

“ – is that someone’s leaked data on the offshore accounts.”

Darwin nods. “Turns out a helluva lot of CIA agents – ”

“And other rich Americans,” Alex interjects.

“ – were involved in the offshore accounts. And since the money’s linked to the money laundering thing in Nicaragua, the FBI’s looking into it.”

“That money’s going nowhere,” Erik concludes.

“And Palacios’ funding is going nowhere as well,” Alex finishes.

Erik begins to protest. “But that doesn’t mean – ”

“Right, right,” Darwin agrees, “But for now.”

“For now,” Erik echoes.

Sean and Hank stomp into the kitchen a second after that, shaking snowflakes from their hair. Ororo squeals and waves her hands.

“Not in the kitchen!” Sean begins, but snow begins to fall inside, and both his and Hank’s rumbling laughter fills the now-small kitchen.

“No more snowball fights!” Raven shrieks, and she flees the kitchen.

Erik takes the distraction and slips out of the kitchen as well, Angel holding her hands over her head and following him.

Raven’s cackles disappear into the hallway, her skin rippling to match the interior decoration of the mansion as Sean barrels out of the kitchen to chase her.

Angel reaches out to yank him out of harm’s way; Erik narrowly avoids being run over.

He blinks.

They’ve escaped to the living room, although the sound of Hank’s rumbling and Raven’s high peals of laughter are still faintly audible. “Well,” Erik says.

“You get used to it,” Angel says.

Erik turns slightly to look at her. “You stayed,” he says.

She lifts her chin defiantly. “So did you.”

Erik’s lips twitch and he shakes his head slightly. “I’m not staying.”

Angel frowns and then turns as well. Her wings glint in the pale light that leaks through the living room windows. “You’re not – ”

Erik shakes his head.

“Oh,” she says.

Erik makes his move to exit the room and abscond back upstairs when Angel says, “But – ”

Erik halts and turns slightly.

“You don’t have to,” she blurts out.

Erik shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ve done what I needed to do,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

Erik turns to completely face Angel. “I mean, the last time I left, it was because of a misunderstanding.”

Angel guesses, “You thought he wanted you to leave.”

“He didn’t know I was leaving,” Erik says quietly. “But that isn’t – the point is that – ”

“Your ideologies aren’t the same, you’re different.” She waves a hand. “He told me before.”

“We’ve changed,” Erik says slowly, “In light of recent events, I – ” he licks his lips, “Maybe the world isn’t divided so neatly.”

Angel crosses her arms over her chest

“Either way,” Erik shakes his head, stopping that train of thought, “Either way, we’ve – made up, I suppose, and I,” Erik bites out the next words as though they are difficult for him to say, “I could stay, but I need – time. To come to terms with myself and to – to think things through.”

“Are you going to find the rest of them?” She doesn’t need to specify whom she is talking about.

“I might,” Erik says uncomfortably. “I haven’t – I don’t know, yet.”

“Right,” she says. Then she looks uncomfortable as well. “Well. Just make sure you say goodbye to everyone before you leave.” She looks at him. “Not like last time.”

In spite of himself, Erik chuckles. “Not like last time.”

And then, Erik finds himself walking up to Charles’ study.

Erik leaves the chaos of the kitchen behind, taking the stairs up to the third floor of the mansion.

The door opens easily and Charles turns around expectantly.

“Leaving already?” Charles asks lightly.

“There’s no reason for me to stay,” Erik says.

Downstairs, the students begin making lunch. Erik feels the metal appliances of the room beginning to rumble while Charles feels his students’ laughter.

Charles leans against his desk and crosses his hands. He looks at the floor. “I suppose you’ve come to say goodbye, then.”

“I have,” Erik echoes tonelessly. He walks across the room and stands in front of Charles.

“We’ve been here before,” Charles says.

“Not quite,” Erik feels his lips turning upwards.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay?” Charles asks.

Erik looks away in lieu of an answer.

Charles stands abruptly, and leans forward, pressing two palms on either side of Erik’s face, pulling the other man close so Charles can kiss his temple. Erik grips Charles’ wrists tightly for an impossibly long moment. Then both of them let go.

Erik turns and heads for the door.

Charles smiles, small and bittersweet, in spite of himself. He does not watch Erik leave.

Erik gathers his things quickly and lugs them downstairs. He hesitates on the last step, however; he doesn’t want to make a spectacle and wishes there were an exit in the back of the house.

After a heavy moment of deliberation, Erik steps off the stairs and walks down the hallway past the kitchen.

He meets Raven in the hallway before he enters the foyer.

“I’m leaving,” he says. At the last moment, Erik realizes that his statement, along with his packed bags, is unnecessary.

“I noticed.”

“Are you coming?” Erik asks, although he knows the answer.

“Thanks for the heads-up on that, yeah?” Raven smiles in spite of herself. “You come downstairs, two minutes before you leave, and then ask, ‘Oh, Raven, I’m leaving. By the way, you wanna come?’” She scoffs.

“You’re happy here,” Erik says, gesturing to her, blue scales and all. “I see no reason to take you away.”

“Take me away?” Raven raises an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, actually,” she says. “Does that mean you’re not happy here?”

“I can’t stay,” Erik says. He begins to walk down the hallway and Raven moves to accompany him as they head into the foyer. As they pass the kitchen, Alex notices them and rises discreetly, leaving Sean and Hank and Ororo to their fun as he follows. His watch tugs him out of the kitchen.

“Too bad,” Raven says with forced casualty.

Erik doesn’t answer.

They reach the foyer. Raven reaches out and opens the front door. “Send us postcards,” she says to him, “Don’t wait to keep in touch.”

“We’ll see,” Erik says. “Goodbye, Mystique.”

Raven watches him head toward the garage. As she moves to close the door, a voice yells, “Hold on!” Raven sees Alex’s head of hair as he jogs out of the house.

“You’re getting slow, Summers,” Erik says, as Alex catches up to him. The two of them walk to the garage.

“You’re not here to keep me in shape,” Alex pants, “Hank and Charles are slow as fuck.”

“No excuse to slack off,” Erik says as he drops his luggage into a car.

“You’re really leaving?”

“I am.”

“Are you coming back?”

Erik pauses. Of all the people Erik’s spoken to today, only Ororo and Alex are blunt enough to ask if Erik might return. “Charles,” Erik says slowly, “He wants to… make amends.”

“He wants you back,” Alex guesses. He places his hands on his hips.

“I have things to settle,” Erik says. “And things to think about.”

“Like what?”

“Azazel, for one,” Erik says. “Emma Frost.”

“But,” Alex frowns, “Isn’t she – ”

“That’s what I thought,” Erik says, before continuing, “And I might visit Jimena as well. See if Dante wants to come here.”

“To the school?”

Erik shrugs. “If Charles was in the right mindset when we were in Nicaragua, he would have asked. Figured I might do the asking for him, since he wasn’t himself then.”

Alex nods.

“We’ll see,” Erik says, finally answering Alex’s initial question. The trunk of the car closes. “Now are you driving me to the airport or not?”

Alex grins and hops into the car.

From the window of his study, Charles watches the car peel out of the garage and drive down the gravel pathway.

 _Goodbye, Erik_ , Charles projects, although he does not expect an answer.

When Charles does receive an answer, the thought is so warm and fond, he almost projects it to the mansion in shock: _Goodbye, old friend_.


End file.
